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SEEING AND BEING 



SEEING AND BEING 



PERCEPTION AND CHARACTER 



BY 



H. CLAY TRUMBULL 




JOHN D. WATTLES, Publisher 
1889 



.^V 1 



Copyright, 1889 

BY 

H. CLAY TRUMBULL 



'2-9'fHf 



PREFACE. 



Lessons from one man's experiences and 
observations will not be of value to all. But 
lessons from any man's experiences and ob- 
servations will be of value to some. No man 
stands, in his feelings and sympathies, for his 
entire race. But every man, in his sympa- 
thies and feelings, stands for a class. 

Hence it is, that whatever truths have made 
a profound impression on a man in the prog- 
ress of his life-course are likely to make a 
correspondent impression on others who are 
like him, if he can bring those truths with 
any vividness before them. And when a 
series of related truths have excited interest 
in their detached separateness, they will 
hardly fail to excite fresh interest in their 
exhibited relation to one another and to a 
common central truth. 

5 



6 PREFACE. 

The essays in this volume are an outcome 
of their writer's observings and experien- 
cings in his varied life-course. They were 
received with interest as editorial contribu- 
tions in the pages of The Sunday School 
Times, while appearing there, one by one, 
during a term of ten years or more; and 
their republication has been urged by many 
who desire them for preservation in a per- 
manent form. They are now presented in a 
new light, in a logical order for the elucida- 
tion and emphasis of a truth which is com- 
mon to them all. 

The gaining of the thoughts of this vol- 
ume has not been without cost to its writer. 
His hope is that the considering of them 
will not be without stimulus and profit to 
its readers. 

H. C. T. 

Philadelphia, 

August 14, 1889. 



CONTENTS. 



I. PAGB 

Seeing, and Seeing 9 

II. 
Seeing More and More 17 

III. 
What We See Shows What We Are 27 

IV. 
Perceiving Beauty 37 

V. 
Recognizing Nobleness . , 51 

VI. 

Discerning Character at a Glimpse 59 

VII. 
The Poetic Sense in Seeing 69 

VIII. 

The Unseen as a Charm of the Seen 83 

IX. 

Seeing the Signs of Cost 93 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 

X. PAGE 

Sympathy as a Means of Insight 103 

XI. 

Seeing Through Another's Eyes 115 

XII. 
The Light-Shedding Power of a Shade .... 125 

XIII. 
The Softening Light of Reflection 131 

XIV. 
Having an Eye for Trifles 137 

XV. 
We Cannot See Ourselves 147 

XVI. 
The Gain of a Twofold View .^ 159 

XVII. 
Striving in the Direction of Our Best Seeing . 169 

XVIII. 
The Power of a Remembered Vision 177 

XIX. 
The Transforming Power of a Gaze 187 

XX. 

The Cost of a Mountain Outlook 195 



I. 

SEEING, AND SEEING. 



" Blessed are your eyes, for they see," said 
our Lord to his favored disciples. And in 
saying this Jesus made a sharp contrast 
between his keen-eyed followers and those 
about them in whom was fulfilled the saying 
of the prophet, " Seeing ye shall see, and 
shall not perceive." There are eyes, and 
there are eyes. There are eyes which see, 
and there are eyes which do not see. Now, 
as in the days of our Lord, it is a blessed 
thing to have seeing eyes. 

" Our sight," says Addison, " is the most 
perfect and most delightful of our senses. It 
fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas, 
converses with objects at the greatest dis- 
tance, and continues longest in action with- 
out being tired or satiated with its proper 
enjoyments." But there is seeing, and there 

9 



IO SEEING AND BEING. 

is seeing ; there is a seeing that sees, and 
there is a seeing that does not see. A dog 
can see a fine painting or a piece of faultless 
sculpture ; but what is a dog's sight of either 
colored canvas or glowing marble ? A cow 
can look upon a cathedral, or a bird upon a 
landscape, but what can cow or bird see of the 
real or of the ideal in landscape or cathedral ? 
Many a man gains no more from his seeing 
a thing of beauty or a scene of grandeur than 
if he were a dog, a cow, or a bird. There 
must be soul in the seeing to have enjoyment 
in the sight. 

"You would be surprised,' , said the intel- 
ligent proprietor of one of our most attrac- 
tive mountain resorts, "to know how few 
persons there are, even among our summer 
guests, who appreciate fine scenery. Many 
who come here come for the pure air or the 
retired location; they have no eye for the 
scenery." Then he told of a morning scene 
of rarest beauty, when the fogs from the river 
valley were rising like waves of molten silver 
up along the verdant hillsides, while the 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 1 

mountains on every hand towered grandly 
above the sea of sun-lit vapor. In his en- 
thusiasm over the sight he had called to it the 
attention of one of his city guests, with the 
exclamation, "Isn't that beautiful !" The 
unexpected response of his prosaic and dull- 
eyed companion was, "Why, no. I don't 
think it is beautiful. I think it is a pretty 
rough country.' , Sahara would have been 
a pleasanter region than the Yosemite for 
that man's eyes to rest on. The trouble in 
his case was not with the scenery, but with 
the seer. 

Nor is such a man a rare exception among 
men. " The difference between landscape and 
landscape is small," says Emerson ; " but 
there is great difference in the beholders." 
" The stars at night stoop down over the 
brownest, homeliest common with all the 
spiritual magnificence which they shed on 
the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of 
Egypt. The uprolled clouds and the colors 
of morning and evening will transfigure ma- 
ples and alders " — to the eye which is blessed 



12 SEEING AND BEING. 

with the power of seeing the transfigured. As 

Dante tells us : 

"All 
Are blessed, even as their sight descends 
Deeper into the truth, wherein rest is 
For every mind. Thus happiness hath root 
In seeing, not in loving — which of sight 
Is aftergrowth." 

One man, looking out from the ocean 
shore, sees before him only a trackless waste 
of wild waters. Another sees there a fathom- 
less deep, a restrained immensity, a type of 
infinitude ; what Byron calls, 

" [A] glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form 
Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time, 
Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm, 
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
Dark-heaving ; — boundless, endless, and sublime — 
The image of Eternity — the throne 
Of the Invisible." 

One man sees, in the mountain range which 
stretches athwart his sight, nothing more 
than a rough barrier to vision and to prog- 
ress. Another sees in every mountain peak 
the " meeting place of earth and heaven, the 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 3 

place where the bending skies meet the 
aspiring planet, the place where the sunshine 
and the cloud keep closest company with the 
granite and the grass ; " or, to him the moun- 
tains are, as Longfellow suggests, " the great 
watch-towers " of earth, which "lift their 
heads far up into the sky, and gaze upward 
and around to see if the Judge of the world 
comes not ! " 

One sees merely the signs of a foreshad- 
owed harvest in the green fields about him, 
or the tokens of the next day's weather as 
he scans the evening sky. Another sees 
beauty and life on every side, and grandeur 
and glory in the upward view. He sees the 
evidences of God's handiwork in leaf and 
flower and moth and bird, as also in cloud 
and star and moon. His eye, as Cowper 

' ' "Discerns 

A ray of heavenly light, gilding all forms : — 

The unambiguous footsteps of the God 

Who gives its luster to an insect's wing, 

And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds." 

One sees in a passing throng only an undis- 



14 SEEING AND BEING. 

tinguishable mass of humanity. Another 
sees in every man of that throng the pos- 
sessor of a unique personality, with its own 
history, its own character, its own hopes and 
fears, its own eternal destiny; a man still 
retaining some vestige of the Divine image 
in which his nature was first created, and still 
the object of the infinite love of God. The 
dizzy whirl of human life is seen by one and 
by another as in Wordsworth's London Fair : 

" O blank confusion ! true epitome 
Of what the mighty City is herself, 
To thousands upon thousands of her sons, 
Living amid the same perpetual whirl 
Of trivial objects melted and reduced 
To one identity, by differences 
That have no meaning, and no end, — 
Oppression under which even highest minds 
Must labor, whence the strongest are not free. 
But though the picture weary out the eye, 
By nature an unmanageable sight, 
It is not wholly so to him who looks 
In steadiness, who hath among least things 
An under sense of greatest ; sees the parts 
As parts, but with a feeling of the whole." 

And so it is in all the range of human sight; 






SEEING AND BEING. 1 5 

one sees, and another sees. The sight is the 
same; but how different the seeing! 

Thomas Starr King quotes a little German 
poem which tells in beautiful simplicity how 
differently different eyes look upon the things 
of nature. " Two men had gone up from the 
city to the summit of one of the Alps. They 
returned, and their kindred pressed about 
them to know what visions they had enjoyed. 

" 'Twas a buzz of questions on every side, 
1 And what have you seen ? Do tell ! ' they cried. 

" The one with yawning made reply, 
'What have we seen? Not much have I ! 
Trees, mountains, meadows, groves, and streams, 
Blue sky, and clouds, and sunny gleams.* 

" The other, smiling, said the same ; 
But with face transfigured, and eyes of flame : 
'Trees, meadows, mountains, groves, and streams, 
Blue sky, and clouds, and sunny gleams.' " 

The one had eyes which saw; the other, 
seeing, saw not. 

Ruskin says : " Hundreds of people can 
talk for one who can think, but thousands 
can think for one who can see. To see 



1 6 SEEING AND BEING. 

clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — 
all in one." And Browning's claim is : 

" In the seeing soul, all worth lies, I assert.*' 

Blessed are those eyes which see. 



II. 

SEEING MORE AND MORE. 



No one can see at the first glimpse all that 
is to be seen in anything that is worth see- 
ing. In many an object of sight, hardly an 
appreciable portion of its distinctively note- 
worthy points of interest can be perceived at 
the first looking ; and, in every case, there is 
more to be seen than shows itself to a casual 
observer. Only he who sees more and more 
in his seeing and observing, really sees that 
which is best worth seeing in this world ; and 
how to see more and more in one's seeing 
and observing, is one of the things in this 
world that is well worth knowing. 

If you would train a child to enjoy looking 
at pictures, you must train him to see more 
and more in each picture at which he looks. 
A child's first impulse in looking at a book 
of colored pictures, is to glance at one pic- 
2 17 



1 8 SEEING AND BEING. 

ture, and then turn over the pages until he 
finds another ; and so on through the book, 
over and over again. In this way he would 
soon know each picture as a whole, or by 
one of its central features, but not in its minor 
details. If, however, you ask a child to point 
to a man in a picture at which he is looking, 
and then to point out the man's face, and the 
man's eye, and then to point out a dog, or a 
tree, or a bird, in the same picture, you give 
to that child an added interest in his picture- 
looking, and you enable him to see more and 
more in that at which he looks. It is much 
the same in training a child to look at a 
flower, or a bird, or a tree, or a house, or at 
a landscape or a sunset. You must help 
him to see more and more in everything at 
which he looks, by looking for more and 
more; and in doing this, you are adding 
to his powers of observation, and increasing 
his possibilities of enjoyment by means of 
his eyes. 

Most persons have not been so trained, 
while children, to look for more and more in 



SEEIXG AXD BEIXG. 1 9 

their seeing, as to be able to see more and 
more in their looking; hence most per- 
sons go through the world as an untrained 
child goes through his colored picture-book, 
glancing at one picture after another as it 
passes before the eyes, without seeing more 
of it than stands out on the surface. He who 
sees more and more in his looking is an 
exception among his fellows, and he has 
exceptional power and exceptional enjoy- 
ment in consequence. 

One man often sees more than another in 
one line of looking, because his eye has been 
trained in that particular line ; but rarely does 
a man continue to see more and more in the 
line of his most careful seeing, because, in 
most cases, a man does not expect to see more 
in that direction, after he has attained to a cer- 
tain measure of perception. Yet he who sees 
most in any one line of seeing might see more 
and more in that very line, if only he realized 
his possibilities of such seeing ; for in this 
sphere, as in every other, it is true that " who- 
soever hath, to him shall be given," and that 



20 SEEING AND BEING. 

added progress is a privilege that accompa- 
nies added possession. 

A dog-fancier can see more than most men 
see of the special points of a dog ; a lover of 
horses can see more than most men see of 
the peculiar characteristics of a horse; a 
woodman, a farmer, a cotton-dealer, an engi- 
neer, a sailor, can see more than others see 
in the objects of his particular interest as an 
observer. But all these men are likely to 
limit their seeing, and their expectation of 
seeing in their line of observing, to those 
points and characteristics which are essential 
to an understanding of the case from their 
purely professional point of view, leaving out 
of thought all that which might be seen in 
realms beyond their present sphere of per- 
sonal interest. The dog-fancier, for example, 
can quickly see the points in a dog which 
indicate his breed and quality and age and 
relative value, and even his disposition ; but 
he is not likely to see those distinctive signs 
of a dog's measure of intelligence which tend 
to define the line, if line there be, between 



SEEING AND BEING. 21 

what we call instinct and what we call intel- 
lect; yet just here a wise observer might 
see more and more, indefinitely. 

A cotton-dealer can see the relative fineness 
and strength of the fiber he " staples," and can 
perceive its possibilities for the market and 
for the factory ; but he is not likely to see 
the wonderful beauties of the cotton fiber as 
disclosed by the microscope, and as judged 
by the eye of the naturalist and the artist; 
although there is more and more to be seen 
in this direction, continually, to those who 
are tireless in their search for new disclosures 
of the vegetable world. And so it is all the 
way along in this matter of seeing. He who 
seems to see most, might see more and more 
if he were ready to see it. 

Many a traveler expects to see " all that is 
worth seeing " in a city that he visits for the 
first time, in a few hours or a few days, by 
driving through its principal streets, and by 
looking in upon its public buildings, includ- 
ing its galleries and its museums. Another 
traveler, visiting that same city, sees more and 



22 SEEING AND BEING. 

more to be observed in the peculiarities of 
the people, their dress, their manners, their 
appearance, at every step of his way ; and a 
single hour in one of its galleries or museums 
convinces him that he could see more and 
more to interest and profit him in that one 
place if he could pass several hours of every 
day there for months or years to come. 

It is much the same in observing beauties 
of natural scenery. One man expects to see 
Niagara, or the Yosemite, or the Yellowstone 
Park, or the Alps, or the Nile, as pointed out 
to him by the personal-conductor of a tour- 
ists' agency, in the schedule time of the con- 
ventional tour, without missing anything that 
other tourists have seen at the same point of 
observation ; while another is sure, from his 
first glimpse of what is before him, that he 
should be seeing more and more that is 
worth his seeing, for days and weeks to 
come, if only he could continue looking 
from that point, and from other points avail- 
able to him. 

And as it is to the tourist, so is it to the 



SEEING AND BEING. 23 

expectant and observant seer in his own 
home, in town or country. He may think 
that he has seen all that is to be seen to 
advantage in the streets he passes daily, in the 
fields upon which his home windows look 
out, or in the ocean, the mountains, or the 
skies, visible in the distance from those win- 
dows. Or, again, he may realize that there 
is more and more for him to see just there, 
or in just that direction, so long as he lives 
there. And according to his belief, so it will 
be unto him, in his seeing and seeing. 

The soul-power which enables the eyes to 
see more and more continually is a matter of 
growth and cultivation, rather than of inborn 
possession. He who understands that his 
eyes are given him not only to see with but 
to search with, has already learned the alpha- 
bet of observation by which all the discov- 
eries of taste and knowledge in the realm of 
nature are disclosed and described to the 
world. Only he can see more and more 
with his eyes, who has more and more in his 
mind that he is looking to find outside. 



24 SEEING AND BEING. 

As John Burroughs says of woodcraft- 
seeing : " You must have the bird in your 
heart before you can find it in the bush. The 
eye must have purpose and aim. No one 
ever yet found the walking fern who did not 
have the walking fern in his mind. A person 
whose eye is full of Indian relics picks them 
up in every field he walks through." Or as 
old Matthew Henry phrases this truth in its 
application to another sphere : " He who 
would observe God's providences, shall have 
God's providences to observe." 

Quite as much as in God's book of nature, 
is expectant looking of value and impor- 
tance in God's book of revelation. Says old 
Thomas Fuller, " Lord, this morning I read 
a chapter in the Bible, and therein observed 
a memorable passage whereof I never took 
notice before. Why now, and no sooner, did 
I see it ? Formerly my eyes were as open, 
and the letters as legible. Is there not a thin 
veil laid over thy word, which is more rarefied 
by reading, and at last wholly worn away ? " 
Only he who sees more and more in the 



SEEING AND BEING. 



25 



Bible, and who expects to see more and more 
there, can ever see what is in the Bible, or 
have any comprehension of its truths and 
its beauties. 

As it is in seeing with the natural eye, so 
is it in the realm of mental and of spiritual 
vision. One man sees all that he cares to 
see, because he sees all that he supposes 
there is to be seen, in the direction of knowl- 
edge or of faith, at his first looking in that 
direction. Another man is sure that, because 
he has seen something as he looked thither, 
there must be a great deal more there for 
him to see, if only he will continue to look 
expectantly ; for there is always more to be 
seen, in any and every direction, by him who 
expects to see more and more. Just here, 
indeed, is the line of marked distinction be- 
tween the true scholar and the vain pedant. 
The one sees; the other supposes he has 
seen. The one sees more and more; the 
other saw it all the first time he looked. The 
one will make progress in knowledge and in 
faith as long as he lives ; the other reached 



26 SEEING AND BEING. 

the limit of his progress when he opened his 
eyes to the light of day. The one has no 
conception of any light or sight beyond that 
which was his at the earliest hour of his life's 
morning ; the other is always in that path- 
way of " the light of dawn that shineth more 
and more unto the perfect day/' 



III. 

WHAT WE SEE SHOWS WHAT 
WE ARE. 



A keen-eyed New England observer, of a 

generation ago, in telling of the drinking 

customs which prevailed in his earlier days, 

spoke of the frequency, in those times, of 

delirium tremens even among persons of the 

" better class" in the community. As an 

illustration in this line, he mentioned a father 

and a son, living next door to him, who were 

often thus carried away by their appetites, 

and whom he was sometimes called to assist 

in controlling, when the members of their 

family were unable to manage them. " And 

it was veiy singular," he said, " to note the 

difference in the two men, when they had the 

1 horrors/ The father was a genial, jolly 

man; and he always saw monkeys in his 

visions. He would laugh till the tears ran 

27 



28 SEEING AND BEING. 

down his cheeks, as he pointed out the 
dancing monkeys with their cornstalk fiddles, 
which were all about him in his visions. 
On the other hand, the son was morose and 
sullen ; and when his brain was excited he 
always saw Spaniards coming to murder 
him, and devils ready to torture him. Each 
of the men showed what was in him by 
what he saw at such a time." And in that 
discriminating suggestion the New England 
observer declared a truth that has its appli- 
cations in other realms than that of visions 
and dreams. In all that one sees as he looks 
about him in the world as it is, there is more 
or less of an indication of what the observer 
is, in his character, his characteristics, his 
tastes, and his aspirations. 

Three men were accidental companions in 
a journey along the Pacific coast, including a 
visit to the Yosemite Valley. All three had 
the same scenery before them, but no two of 
them saw the same things as they looked out 
on that scenery. One of them seemed to 
see nothing but sheep pasturage, or its lack. 



SEEING AND BEING. 29 

He was all the time talking of the possibili- 
ties of raising sheep on the hill-sides and on 
the plains traversed by the party. He proved 
to be a Pennsylvania wool-grower. A second 
one was mentally measuring the big trees, 
and was indulging in calculations as to the 
amount of timber which one of the red- wood 
forests would supply, and as to the time and 
cost necessary to bring that timber to a mar- 
ket. He was found to be a lumberman from 
Michigan. The third man was constantly 
drawn away from the attractions of the scen- 
ery by the observed peculiarities of his travel- 
ing companions, and of their guide, and of 
the persons whom they met in their journey- 
ing. Nothing in inanimate nature could 
command his sustained interest, in compari- 
son with human beings. He was a Christian 
worker from the East, who cared more for 
persons than for things. 

Yet farther on in their journeyings those 
three tourists met two other travelers, who 
again had other sights to see in that which 
was common to all, yet which was singular to 



SO SEEING AND BEING. 

each. One of the two new observers saw only- 
beauty in the natural scenery, and picturesque- 
ness in any group of living personalities ; the 
other was on the lookout for signs of former 
life, and of ancient days, and of natural 
changes in the country about him. The one 
was an artist ; the other was a scientist. 

And just what was observable in those five 
observers on the Pacific coast at that time, 
might have been then noted among other 
observers elsewhere; as, indeed, it could be 
noted everywhere at all times, where men 
who observe are intelligently observed. The 
desert Arab sees nothing of natural beauty 
in the natural landscape within sight of him. 
To him a mountain is only a barrier to be 
surmounted tediously in his journeying, and 
a spring of water has attractiveness only be- 
cause of its value in thirst-quenching. The 
African hunter in a weird jungle loses sight 
of everything about him except that which 
gives him a sign of his game, or of the helps 
or hindrances to its capture. And the aver- 
age woman in America, in Europe, in Asia, 



SEEING AND BEING. 3 1 

or in Africa, will see another woman's dress, 
be it much or little, when that dress merely 
as a dress would hardly be observed by sheep- 
grower, lumberman, Christian worker, artist, 
scientist, desert guide, or jungle hunter. In 
one sphere, as in all spheres, what one sees 
shows more or less of what one is; or, in 
other words, the observer's personality is un- 
consciously projected into the object which 
commands his attention and interest as an 
observer. 

It is true that not every person would be 
limited, as an observer, to a single aspect of 
the scene before him, as in the case of the 
persons already cited in illustration of this 
truth ; for unquestionably there are those 
who would at one and the same time see 
beauty as with the eye of an artist, facts as 
with the eye of a scientist, persons as with 
the eye of a lover of his fellows, while having, 
also, an eye to the practical bearings of their 
surroundings. Yet such persons would, just 
as surely as if they were men of one idea, 
show what is in them by what they see out- 



32 SEEING AND BEING. 

side of themselves. Their many-sided seeing 
shows their many-sided being. Not every 
man is so absorbed with a single conception 
that it possesses his entire personality, nor 
yet to that extent that it is his prevailing con- 
ception in life. But whether a man be swayed 
by one thought or by many thoughts, by a 
single purpose or by conflicting purposes, 
his thought and his purpose, or his thoughts 
and his purposes, will be shown outside of 
himself in what he sees beyond himself, and 
in his estimates of the chief thing or things 
which are noteworthy in that which he 
observes. 

In the field of character, as in the field of 
natural scenery, what one sees is an indica- 
tion of what one is. If a man, in looking 
upon his fellows, sees only signs of selfish- 
ness, or of impurity, or of dishonest courses, 
he discloses the coloring of his mental and 
moral vision, through which he looks upon 
others. If a man says that there is no such 
thing as absolute unselfishness in friendship 
or in other loving devotedness, but that 



SEEING AND BEING. 33 

everybody is influenced in his affections by 
his personal interests, it is clear that that man 
gives proof that his own inner experience 
supplies him with no reason for supposing 
that others are actuated by self-forgetful 
fidelity to any object of their truest and 
tenderest regard. If a business man insists 
that strict and unswerving truth and honesty 
are incompatible with business enterprise in 
times like these, he practically announces 
that he is not trying to carry on his business 
in a way which would be hopelessly imprac- 
ticable. He who is always suspicious of 
others gives just ground for suspicion of 
himself. He who is sure that everybody is 
worse below the surface than above it, thereby 
speaks out concerning his surface and sub- 
surface characteristics. 

And so it is all through the range of char- 
acter-seeing. A loving spirit shows itself in 
loving estimates of others ; or, in other words, 
he who at heart is lovely shows his loveliness 
in his recognition of a lovely side in every- 
body whom he has occasion to observe. He 
3 



34 SEEING AND BEING. 

who sees trustworthiness in others, shows 
that he is a man worthy to be trusted. And 
just in proportion as a man is hearty and 
enthusiastic in his rejoicing over the high 
and admirable qualities which, to his mind's 
eye, stand out in the character of a friend to 
whom he looks up as the embodiment of a 
lofty ideal, does that man give evidence of a 
correspondence in his own character of high 
and admirable instincts and aspirings in the 
direction of those which he sees and rejoices 
over beyond himself. 

This truth has a certain recognition in the 
popular estimate of writers, as they disclose 
themselves in their writings. Whether it be 
the cynic like Rochefoucauld, the humorist 
like Charles Lamb, the genial satirist like 
Thackeray, the lover of nature like Words- 
worth, or the lover of his fellows like Whittier, 
the writer shows what he is in his personal 
character, by what he sees as worthy of a 
record when he looks out upon the world 
about him. And if, indeed, it be said that 
the personality of so great a writer as Shake- 



SEEING AND BEING. 35 

speare is not disclosed in his writings, that is 
only another way of saying that Shakespeare's 
many-sidedness of character is so unique 
that no single reader is capable of fully com- 
prehending that character, and hence of per- 
ceiving it in its faithful record. 

Looking out upon the wider sphere of the 
universe as a whole, with its exhibit of God's 
plan and its suggestings of God's character, 
an observer shows what he is by what he 
sees. One man sees much to grieve over 
and much to be regretted ; another man sees 
much to rejoice over and much to delight in. 
To one the outlook is chiefly a dark one, 
with only here and there a fitful gleam of 
lurid light to make the darkness gloomier. 
To the other, the light is the chief thing 
observable; and the very darkness is but as 
a shadow to bring out the brightness into 
more admirable relief. The difference be- 
tween the two views is not in the moral 
landscape, but in the moral nature of the 
observer. The cause of hopeless discontent 
on the one hand, and of restful contentment 



36 SEEING AND BEING. 

on the other hand, is in the person who sees, 
not in the scenery which is seen. 

It is this truth which is the point of the 
well-known Eastern parable of the dead dog. 
A dead dog lay in the streets of an Eastern 
city. One and another of the passers-by 
gave expression to their estimate of the 
sight, as they came and went near it. One 
said, "What a disgusting sight!" Another 
said, "How that fouls the air!" Yet another 
said, " Why don't the authorities remove that 
nuisance ? " But by and by there came one of 
majestic mien and of gentle manner, who, as 
he looked in passing, said, " How very white 
are his teeth ! " Then all agreed, " That must 
be Jesus of Nazareth; for only he could see 
beauty in a dead dog." If only there were 
more of the spirit of Jesus in us, we should 
see more than we do of purity and of beauty 
in God's world about us here. 



IV. 

PERCEIVING BEAUTY. 



Everybody admires the beautiful. That 
is, everybody admires that which he deems 
the beautiful. But not everybody has the 
same standard of beauty; not everybody 
perceives beauty with like readiness in that 
which one or another admires as beautiful. 
In fact, beauty depends quite as much on the 
spirit and perception of the observer, as on 
the form and substance of the thing ob- 
served. The eye alone cannot perceive 
beauty. It is the soul back of the eye which 
gives the possibility of beauty to be perceived 
by the eye. 

Among all the various definitions of beauty, 
none has seemed more satisfactory than that 
of Principal Shairp, the philosophic lover of 
the beautiful. He has suggested that as 
sound " is not a purely objective entity, but 

37 



38 SEEING AND BEING, 

is a result that requires to its production the 
meeting of an outward vibration with a hear- 
ing mind," so, also, " beauty, neither wholly 
without nor wholly within us, is a product 
resulting from the meeting of certain quali- 
ties of the outward world with a sensitive 
and imaginative soul." Beauty is a result 
rather than a cause of an admiring mind. It 
is in the seer rather than in the thing seen. 

Whether or not, for example, there be 
beauty in a gathering storm on the seacoast 
depends on the fact of that storm being 
observed, on the one hand by an artist or 
a poet, or on the other hand by a terror- 
stricken woman, or an old sailor with his 
mind full of anxiety for comrades whom he 
knows to be nearing a lee shore. And so in 
all the range of nature's realm; the attitude 
of mind, as well as the qualities of char- 
acter, in the individual observer, has much 
to do with giving to the thing observed the 
essential elements of beauty. 

It is much the same in the realm of litera- 
ture as it is in the sphere of nature. One man 



SEEIXG AXD BEING. 39 

sees only an unintelligible series of strange 
characters on a printed page. Another per- 
ceives there all the beauties of thought and 
expression in the masterpieces of Homer. 
The difference is not in the thing seen, but in 
the observer's capacity of perceiving. Even 
if he can read the poetry with the same ease 
as another, one does not, necessarily, perceive 
there the beauty which is present to the 
other's eye. 

Frederick W. Robertson shows his insight 
of this practical truth when he says, " I 
fancy character may be measured, both in 
depth and quality, by the poet who is the 
chosen favorite. He [the favorite poet] is a 
kind of Nilometer to mark the depth at differ- 
ent distances on the river." And all of us 
judge not the poet, but the reader, when we 
hear one express his estimate of the beauty 
to be found in Shakespeare or Milton, in 
Shelley or Keats, in Wordsworth or Brown- 
ing, in Tennyson or Longfellow, in Lowell 
or Whittier. The question in our minds is 
not as to the beauty in the poetry, but rather 



40 SEEING AND BEING. 

as to the observer's capacity for the percep- 
tion of the beautiful. 

So it is, again, in the sphere of painting and 
sculpture. One man sees only a confused 
mass of color, or an inexpressive marble 
figure, where another sees a thing of beauty, 
because of his clearer perception of the pur- 
pose of the artist, and of the practical real- 
ization of that purpose. And the beauty 
which is once perceived, can be so pointed 
out and defined by the superior observer, or 
be so apprehended by him who grows to it, 
as to become a reality where before it had 
no existence. Thus Sir Joshua Reynolds 
tells of how long it took him to perceive the 
true beauty of Raphael's frescoes in the 
Loggia of the Vatican ; not because of any 
lack of beauty in those frescoes, but because 
of the need of further study of the elements 
of that beauty on the part of their artist- 
observer. When, however, he had perceived 
the full beauty of those great works, he was 
able to be a guide to others in the percep- 
tion of their artistic value. 



SEEIXG AXD BEING. 4 1 

The gorgeous paintings of Turner were, 
through the teachings of Ruskin, changed, to 
the public sense, from objects of derision or 
wonderment, to objects of admiration and de- 
light. And Raskin himself could come to 
see beauty in the pictures of Kate Greenaway, 
which at first he passed by with a sneer. 
New beauty has been continually showing 
itself in Millet's delicious paintings, since 
the all-pervading spirit and sentiment of 
those paintings have been more widely and 
more clearly recognized. 

You can, in a sense, measure the character 
and the capacity of an ordinary observer in 
the great art galleries of Europe, by learn- 
ing whether he finds more beauty in the 
gross realism of Titian, in the unreal spirit- 
uality of Fra Angelica, or in Raphael's ex- 
alted union of body, soul, and spirit; whether 
his eves have delight in the mere graceful 
lines of the Venus de Medici and the Apollo 
Belvedere, or in the soul-filled face and the 
faith-poised figure of the matchless David of 
Michael Angelo. The measure of admira- 



42 SEEING AND BEING. 

tion marks not the work of art, but the soul 
of him who observes the artist's work. 

" Set a golden statue by Phidias before a 
child," says Thomas Starr King, " and it sees 
a mass of brilliant color; before an avari- 
cious eye, and it gloats over the stately em- 
bodiment of so much cash ; before a devotee 
of anatomy, and he finds a revelation of so 
much bodily proportion; before a mineral- 
ogist, and he perceives so much chemical 
and mineral truth; before an artist, and he 
gazes upon so much skill and beauty; before 
a man of moral insight, and he discerns the 
grandeur of a God transfusing its substance, 
pouring over the brightness of its limbs, 
controlling its symmetry, breathing in un- 
drainable suggestiveness from its face. Each 
eye lights upon a truth; but the last one 
pierces to the finest, highest, all-penetrating, 
all-dominating truth. So it is in the world. 
The senses simply stare at nature; the mind 
looks, and finds law; the taste combines, and 
enjoys art; the soul reads, and gains the per- 
meating wisdom." 



SEEING AND BEING. 43 

And so men see beauty according to their 
capacity for its perception. That at which 
they gaze does not change, but a change in 
them would give it another reality as well as 
another appearance. 

Yet more marked is all this in what is 
spoken of as personal beauty. There is no 
such thing as one who is " beautiful to all 
eyes." In Morocco, as in some of the South 
Sea islands, " corpulency is the most infalli- 
ble mark of beauty;" and every possible 
means is made use of by young women to 
increase their corpulency. Even in the lands 
of the highest Christian civilization, the same 
differences exist in the standards of personal 
beauty as in the estimate of the works of 
art which have been referred to. On every 
side there are seen pictures of those who 
pose as " professional beauties," which, while 
admired by very many, have no more of per- 
sonal attractiveness in them, no more sugges- 
tion of even personal beauty in the originals, 
on the one hand, to many a man of the most 
refined taste and of the keenest perception 



44 SEEING AND BEING. 

of the beautiful, than, on the other hand, 
they would have to an African or South Sea 
native, whose standard of womanly beauty 
is gross corpulency. In this case, that which 
is called exceptionally beautiful by the Eng- 
lishman or American of average cultivation 
and of average character and taste, is as far 
below the highest standard of true beauty, 
as it is above the lowest standard. 

The highest type of personal beauty is 
clearly never of mere feature and outline and 
color. There must be both mind and soul 
showing in and through all these to give 
them their greatest possible attractiveness. 
This is the thought of Spenser, when he 
says: 

"For of the soul the body form doth take; 
For soul is form, and doth the body make." 

Addison tells of the added loveliness of a 
woman's " innocence, piety, good-humor, and 
truth ; virtues which add a new softness to her 
sex, and even beautify her beauty." Young 
asks: 



SEEING AND BEING. 45 

"What's female beauty but an air divine 
Through which the mind's all gentle graces shine ? " 

Pope adds : 

" Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, 
But the joint force and full result of all." 

"To form a finished human beauty, and to 
give it its full influence," says Bacon, "the 
face must be expressive of such gentle and 
amiable qualities as correspond with the 
smoothness and delicacy of the outward 
form." Milton's description of the first and 
most beautiful of women is : 

"Grace was in all her steps, heav'n in her eye, 
In every gesture dignity and love." 

Even Byron recognizes this essential of 
beauty when he sings of one who " walks in 
beauty" because she lives in goodness: 

"And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, 

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, 
The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 

But tell of days in goodness spent, 
A mind at peace with all below, 

A heart whose love is innocent." 



46 SEEING AND BEING. 

Shakespeare states it yet more clearly : 

"Oh, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem 
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give ! 
The rose looks fair, but fairer it we deem 
For that sweet odor which doth in it live." 

To perceive the beauty of mind and soul 
below the surface of the features, and back 
of and within the outer form, and to recog- 
nize the illuminating and transfiguring power 
of these inner and essential elements of 
beauty, is a result and an evidence of supe- 
rior capacity of seeing on the part of the 
observer of the beautiful. Here again it is, 
that what one sees shows what he is. 

This perception of the soul as the source 
and measure of personal beauty gives the 
peculiar power and charm to the remarkable 
paintings of Millet, already mentioned. An 
art-critic says of this " greatest painter of 
humanity" in recent times: "To him, the 
human body, with all its exquisite forms and 
retreating curves, delicate grays and reds, 
and soft palpitating flesh, was but a casket, 



SEEING AND BEING. 47 

beautiful indeed, but enclosing a still more 
wonderful and beautiful soul, that speaks its 
volitions and thoughts, its emotions and 
sensations, with every movement of those 
limbs, with every parting of those lips, and 
every glance of those eyes — to whose elo- 
quent and infinite radiance the opals of the 
Ural or the diamonds of Golconda are but 
inert matter in comparison. Such was hu- 
manity to the searching, divining spirit of 
Millet." And such is humanity to every real 
discerner of the beautiful. 

" A man shall see faces," says Bacon, "that, 
if you examine them part by part, you shall 
find never a good; and yet all together do 
well." There are persons who would not be 
named as beautiful by the standard of pro- 
fessional beauties of to-day, who yet are 
counted as of exceptional beauty by those 
whose standard of beauty is highest, and who 
are sufficiently familiar with the characters 
of those persons to perceive the constant 
irradiation of their faces and forms from the 
light of the soul within. Nor is it partiality 



48 SEEING AND BEING. 

which makes such persons appear beautiful 
to some who know them best. It is rather 
the superior perception of true beauty which 
gives to these observers the ability to recog- 
nize it here. The beauty in such cases may 
be as the beauty of a poem rather than as the 
beauty of a picture ; yet it is a real beauty, 
which is sure to be perceived alike by all 
whose nature and training give them a simi- 
lar sense of the beautiful, however much the 
knowledge of this fact might surprise the 
unconscious possessors of such beauty. 

And as it is true that all recognition of the 
beautiful in nature and in art and in humanity 
is dependent not so much upon the object of 
sight, as upon the character and spirit of the 
seer, much more is this the case in the realm 
of spiritual vision. Spiritual things are spir- 
itually discerned. He who was himself the 
perfection of spiritual beauty, who was "the 
chiefest among ten thousand," and the one 
"altogether lovely," came down into this 
world of ours, and showed himself among 
the sons of men, and behold, he was despised 



SEEING AND BEING. 49 

and rejected of men. He had no form nor 
comeliness, and when men saw him there was 
in him no beauty that they should desire 
him. So also, we may believe, it would be 
again to-day. If Jesus Christ should re- 
appear upon the earth, as he was and as he is, 
he would not gratify the taste nor command 
the admiration and approval of the sons of 
men generally. Neither in his personal pres- 
ence and appearance, in his conduct, nor in 
his spirit, would he be deemed lovely by 
many of those who call themselves by his 
name, but who lack the capacity to perceive 
true spiritual beauty in Christ, or in the re- 
flection of Christ. While they are what they 
are, Christ could never seem beautiful to 
them, he being what he is. 

As the perception of beauty outside of 
one's self can never precede the existence 
within one's self of a measure of correspond- 
ence with the ideal thus recognized; as a 
certain degree of likeness to, or at least of 
sympathy with, the object admired, is essen- 
tial to the perception of beauty in that ob- 
4 



50 SEEING AND BEING. 

ject; so is it unmistakably true that until 
Christ is formed within us as our loved and 
adored spiritual ideal, we can never hope to 
recognize the true spiritual beauty of Christ. 
If we are to have our desire of seeing the 
beauty of the Lord, the beauty of the Lord 
must first be upon us — through being within 
us. It is not until we are like him that we 
can see him as he is. 



V. 

RECOGNIZING NOBLENESS. 



Next to being noble is the ability to recog- 
nize nobleness in others. In fact, the ability 
to recognize nobleness in others indicates a 
measure of nobleness in one's self; the recog- 
nition is a proof of kinship. It is in this as 
it is in every other line of observation and of 
outreaching: one's perceptions and attrac- 
tions and repulsions are the truest test of 
one's personal character. 

There is a sense in which we always meas- 
ure a man by his own standards of measure- 
ment, even if we do not always agree with a 
man's measurement of himself. When we 
are told that the Arabs of the desert have 
absolutely no apprehension of the beauties 
of natural scenery, that they see nothing in 
a mountain but a barrier to easy travel, and 
nothing in a sunset across the sea except a 

5i 



52 SEEING AND BEING. 

sign that it is almost time for sleep, that does 
not lower our estimate of the scenery, but 
it does of the Arabs. The little boy who, 
when asked whom he should wish to see first 
in heaven, answered promptly "Golia'h," 
showed convincingly that size and muscle 
made up his standard of greatness. And he 
who proclaims as his ideal hero a military 
chieftain, or a successful explorer, or a man 
of large riches, or a shrewd schemer, or an 
unselfish patriot, or a devoted missionary, in 
thus passing judgment on others gives to 
others the material for a proper judgment of 
himself. So, also, in pointing out the beauties 
or the flaws of a work of literature or of art, 
or of a human career, any man shows what 
he is by showing what he approves. His 
measure of criticism is so far the measure of 
himself. 

Our Lord did not hesitate to adopt this 
method of judgment when he was on earth. 
When he found a scribe looking through the 
mere letter of the law, and recognizing its 
inner spirit of love, Jesus said unto him, 



SEEING AND BEING. 53 

" Thou art not far from the kingdom of 
God." What the scribe recognized in the 
law, proved what w r as in the scribe. It was 
because the poor Syrophenician mother rec- 
ognized in Jesus more of sympathy and 
tenderness and readiness to give her help 
than showed on the surface in his word and 
manner at the first, that Jesus commended 
her spirit and granted her request. What 
any one recognizes in Jesus is the test — not 
of Jesus, but of the one who observes Jesus. 
When Jesus seemed to the scoffing throng 
at Calvary only a condemned felon, the 
Roman centurion, who had charge of the 
executioners, perceived enough below and 
beyond the surface to cry out, " Truly this 
was the Son of God;" and in that recog- 
nition of the Messiah the centurion won the 
world's recognition of his personal nobleness 
and worth. 

No act of royal David ever showed more 
of his innate nobleness of character than his 
quick recognition of nobleness in the three 
mighty men who were glad to risk their 



. 



54 SEEING AND BEING. 

lives to bring a drink of refreshing to their 
loved and honored leader. "And David was 
then in the hold [of the cave of Adullam] ; 
and the garrison of the Philistines was then 
in Bethlehem. And David longed, and said, 
' Oh that one would give me water to drink 
of the well of Bethlehem, [the old home-well 
of Bethlehem,] which is by the gate ! ' And 
the three mighty men [moved by that cry of 
longing] brake through the host of the Phi- 
listines, and drew water out of the well of 
Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took 
it, and brought it to David. But he [touched 
by their loving fidelity] would not drink 
thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord. 
And he said, ' Be it far from me, O Lord, 
that I should do this. Shall I drink the blood 
of the men that went in jeopardy of their 
lives?' Therefore he would not drink it." 

An ordinary Oriental chieftain would count 
it but an ordinary matter for three of his 
soldiers to risk their lives in order to give 
him comfort ; but it was the superior noble- 
ness in David that made him recognize the 



SEEING AND BEING. 55 

peculiar nobleness in that exhibit of self- 
sacrificing devotedness to him, on the part 
of those brave and generous-minded men. 

It is the nobler men of the world to-day 
who recognize the surpassing nobleness of 
the character of George Washington. It is 
the man who has no vestige of true nobleness 
in his own character, who thinks that Wash- 
ington has been greatly overrated. It is the 
nobler qualities in the character of a man 
like Gladstone that cause him to look up to 
Washington as noble beyond comparison; 
just as it is the higher military ability of a 
man like General Sherman that enables him 
to. see, and to bear testimony to, the great 
military wisdom and skill of Washington. 
It is because the average man is so far be- 
low Gladstone or Sherman, that he confesses 
himself unable to see wherein the special 
greatness of Washington as a soldier or as a 
statesman is to be found. 

Emerson reminds us that "it was a tra- 
dition of the ancient world, that no meta- 
morphosis could hide a god from a god; 



56 SEEING AND BEING. 

and there is a Greek verse which runs, — 

* The gods are to each other not unknown/ " 

It is a Hindoo saying, that, "among emi- 
nent persons, . . . the superior qualities open 
quick communication. The moment the bees 
smell the fragrance of the Ketaki, they instinc- 
tively fly for it." Carlyle suggests that true 
hero-worship is possible only to men who 
are themselves of such heroic mind that they 
can recognize the presence of nobleness in 
those above them. And this truth of the 
ages it is that brings Emerson to say : " I 
do not forgive in my friends the failure to 
know a fine character." Even if one were 
forgiven by others for such a failure, he ought 
not to forgive himself, for it is not in his judg- 
ment, but in himself, that his failure lies. 

In every character that we observe, and in 
every thought or thing that is brought to 
our notice, there is sure to be something of 
good and something of evil. It always re- 
quires less ability, and a lower measure of 
worth, to detect a flaw when the good pre- 



SEEING AND BEING. $7 

dominates, than to perceive that which is 
admirable under an unlovely exterior. In 
perceiving that which is noble, we prove our 
own nobleness, and we promote it also; for 
all good grows and gains by its exercise. In 
giving prominence to any recognized fault or 
lack, we show our own littleness, and we lose 
another opportunity of uplifting ourselves 
and others ; for when we gain in character, 
others are gainers through our attainment 

"Be noble: and the nobleness that lies 
In other men, sleeping but never dead, 
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own." 

There is an educating power in the study 
of noble attributes. And noble attributes 
are sure to be found in every human char- 
acter which has won the world's love and 
honor; even though in every such character 
there is something also which might fairly 
be censured or ridiculed, if that were taken 
by itself. Our duty is to look at the nobler 
aspects of men and women about us who are 
evidently doing a good work, or who are 



58 SEEING AND BEING. 

commanding public confidence and respect, 
in spite of faults or follies which all can see 
and sneer at. In such study it is that prog- 
ress is made toward a likeness of the more 
attractive attributes exhibited in the charac- 
ters we observe, and away from all which 
mars their beauty. 

The next thing to being manly, is to recog- 
nize and honor manliness in another. The 
next thing to being unselfish, is to recognize 
and honor unselfishness in another. The 
next thing to being pure, is to recognize and 
honor purity in another. And the next thing 
to being Christ-like, is to perceive the like- 
ness of Christ; indeed, to perceive Christ's 
likeness is in itself to be Christ-like. 



VI. 

DISCERNING CHARACTER AT 
A GLIMPSE, 



On the road to the Yosemite Valley, by 
what is known as the Mariposa trail, is a 
remarkable outlook, appropriately called In- 
spiration Point, from which is obtained the 
first distinct view of the wonderful valley. 
The lessons of that outlook have their appli- 
cation to many a sphere besides that of land- 
scape viewing. 

It was after a dreary ride, through a dismal 
snow-storm, on a gloomy day, without agree- 
able companionship, that the writer reached 
that point, and, leaving his horse with an 
attendant on the rough mountain road, found 
his way through the wet shrubbery to a 
position on a jutting rock of the eminence, 
said to be favorable to a commanding view, 
and there looked in the direction indicated 

59 



60 SEEING AND BEING. 

by the guide. A dense mist shut out every- 
thing from sight, beyond a few rods at the 
farthest. But, as he looked, the storm was 
over, the clouds parted, the setting sun came 
out, huge masses of vapor lifted themselves 
like a rolling curtain from the depths beyond, 
and the valley below was suddenly exposed 
to full view. 

There at the left stood El Capitan, with 
its sheer walls of granite, like a massive cube 
of rock, rising from the green valley to an 
elevation fifteen times as high as Bunker Hill 
monument; while beyond at the right and 
left rose a dozen or more other granite walls, 
and towering peaks, and lofty domes, some 
of them as high above El Capitan as five, 
ten, or fifteen Bunker Hill monuments piled 
above the first fifteen. The beautiful cata- 
ract of Po-ho-no was pouring its vibratory 
waters over a height three times as great as 
Niagara, while other falls yet three times as 
high as Po-ho-no were shimmering in the 
sunlight. There, in the compass of a view 
three miles by fifteen, were clustered such 



SEEING AND BEING. 6 1 

bewildering sights of grandeur and beauty 
as overwhelmed the gazer with a sense of 
their majesty and vastness, and put at fault 
in an instant every standard of mountain 
measurement and every ideal of natural 
scenery he had ever conceived. 

It was but for a moment. The clouds re- 
turned. The lifted veil was dropped. All 
again was mist and gloom. But that one 
glimpse was sufficient, to him who gazed, to 
reveal beyond doubt or question the wonder- 
ful beauty of the Yosemite Valley. Had no 
other view of it ever been given him, he 
would have known as truly as if he had seen 
it every day from childhood, that it was im- 
pressive and lovely and awe-inspiring beyond 
description. 

Nor is it in natural scenery alone that a 
single glimpse suffices for a disclosure of 
essential characteristics, and fixes for all time 
an estimate of that which is thus observed. 
You enter a room in some city or country 
home, with whose inmates you are quite un- 
acquainted. You see unexpected signs of 



62 SEEING AND BEING. 

refinement and taste there. The furnishing 
is neither elegant nor costly; but it is distinc- 
tively admirable. Grace and delicacy show 
themselves on every side. Good taste and 
cultivation are apparent in the appointments 
and adornings of the room; in single pieces 
of furniture; in the style of the curtains, or 
the colors of the carpet; in the corner brack- 
ets, or a few simple mantel ornaments; in 
pictures on the wall, or books on the table; 
in the selection and arrangement of flowers 
or vines. The less expensive all these are, 
the more they disclose of real character. 
One glance settles the question in your mind 
concerning the taste and refinement of the 
person responsible for the appointments of 
that room. You cannot be mistaken thus 
far. No money can purchase these signs of 
refinement. No deception can make poor 
taste stand for good. You are sure that all 
further acquaintance would only give added 
evidence of the accuracy of your instant 
judgment on this point. 

So also in matters of personal conduct. 



SEEING AND BEING. 63 

In a railway car or on a steamboat you see 
a gentleman leave his seat to give a bit of 
candy to the crying child of a poor overtaxed 
mother, with a look of kindliness on his face 
that could not be simulated. You feel sure 
of his goodness of heart, if you never saw 
anything of him but this. One glimpse is 
sufficient. You would not be afraid to trust 
your child in that man's care at any time. 
Or again you see a richly dressed lady jerk 
the arm of her little girl with an ill-natured 
snap; and you hear the impatient tones of 
her unmotherly rebuke of the child. One 
glimpse is sufficient. You need nothing 
more to satisfy you that she is not the per- 
son to have charge of the infant-class in your 
Sunday-school. 

A neighbor's boy is often judged by you, 
once for all, by a single show of meanness 
or of generosity, of ill-nature or of sweetness 
of temper, of modesty or of impurity. An 
applicant for a place in your office, or shop, 
or kitchen, or on your farm, in many a case 
satisfies you concerning his character by the 



64 SEEING AND BEING. 

way in which he bears himself in his first 
interview with you. And no subsequent dis- 
closure is likely to reverse a conviction based 
on the one glimpse which fairly opens to view 
the distinguishing traits of any person's na- 
ture. The conclusion arrived at is as fixed 
as it is prompt. 

You meet some faces which repel you at a 
glimpse. You know that they are not to be 
trusted. You see selfishness, or lust, or 
malignity, or cunning and deceit, written in 
every line, and exhibited in the expression 
as a whole. You do not want to hear argu- 
ment on the subject. You know that those 
persons are unworthy of confidence and re- 
spect. Again, you see in faces such evi- 
dences of sincerity and uprightness, that you 
give your confidence unreservedly to their 
possessor at the very start. You look into a 
face of refinement and delicacy and saintli- 
ness ; you see there the signs of quick per- 
ceptions, of keen sensitiveness, of purity of 
motive and conduct, of a high-strung nature 
in close control, of attainment in godliness 



SEEING AND BEING, 65 

through sanctified suffering. You are as sure 
at the first glimpse as you ever could be, of 
the superiority of that character in its sphere. 
You give it your reverent admiration from 
the beginning, without a fear that you could 
ever find yourself mistaken in its predomi- 
nant qualities. Or again, in some hour of 
need, you see a face which shows manly 
independence and vigor, to be trusted un- 
waveringly alike in every emergency. One 
glimpse is sufficient. That man can always 
be depended on. 

It is often true that a glance, under certain 
circumstances, exhibits one's character by its 
disclosure of feeling, even more clearly than 
the ordinary expression of face. There are 
single looks of affection which are treasured 
as the choicer memories of a life-time. One 
look of sympathy in a moment of need has 
told so much that it was thenceforward, un- 
failingly, a help and a comfort to a sorely 
burdened heart. There have been sterner 
rebukes in a look than in the bitterest words 
which were ever spoken. "And the Lord 
5 



66 SEEING AND BEING. 

turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter 
remembered the word of the Lord, how he 
had said unto him, Before the cock crow this 
day, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he 
went out and wept bitterly." And many a 
child weeps bitterly, even after he has come 
to full manhood, as he remembers some 
unloving or ungrateful word which long 
ago was rebuked by a mother's never-to- 
be-forgotten look of sad and heart-sick re- 
proach. 

Even a glimpse of a face in its passing on 
the crowded street may be to us as a gleam 
of light from within the golden gates, to give 
us assurance that the realm beyond is an un- 
mistakable reality. It is of such a glimpse 
that Robert Leighton tells : 

" I know the face of him who with the sphere 
Of unseen presences communion keeps : 
His eyes retain its wonders in their clear 

Unfathomable depths. 
He brings the thought that gives to earthly things 

Eternal meaning ; brings the living faith 
That, even now, puts on the immortal wings, 
And clears the shadow, Death. 



SEEING AND BEING. 67 

This in his face I see ; and, when we meet, 

My earthliness is shamed by him ; but yet 
Takes hope, to think that in the unholy street, 
Such men are to be met." 

Or the passing glimpse may give its dis- 
closure of such torture of soul and such 
familiarity with evil, as to bring a conviction 
akin to that which prompted the women of 
Verona to say of the gloomy-faced Dante: 
"That man has been in hell !" 

He who would be judged favorably at a 
glimpse, must have a character that deserves 
a favorable judgment at all times. It is of 
no use for one to be on the watch for oppor- 
tunities to make the abiding impression in 
the hope that just then one can shape it 
desirably. That which shows one conclu- 
sively comes out from within; it cannot be 
put on. No forced smile or designing words 
of kindly tone, no pretense of integrity, of 
refinement, of independence and manly vigor, 
can be a substitute for that which is unaf- 
fected and sincere. What we are, not what 
we assume to be, is settled by the single 



68 SEEING AND BEING. 

glimpse of us which discloses our real selves 
to those whose opinion is worth having. This 
truth it is that gives force to the injunction 
of Solomon : " Keep thy heart [thine inner 
self] with all diligence [or, above all that 
thou guardest] ; for out of it are the issues 
of life; " and out of it are, also, the uncon- 
scious and inevitable disclosures of personal 
character. 



VII 
THE POETIC SENSE IN SEEING. 



It is the poetic sense which perceives beauty 
in the things of the natural world, where the 
purely prosaic mind would see nothing to 
attract or impress. What we call " the poetry 
of nature" is, in fact, that view of nature 
which is in the eye of the poet-observer. 
The multiplied " Poems of Places," for ex- 
ample, which Longfellow has gathered and 
classified, are proofs of the poet spirit in 
those who saw, rather than of the poem- 
inspirings of that which was Seen. 

"Sure there are poets which did never dream 
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream 
Of Helicon : we therefore may suppose 
Those made not poets, but the poets those." 

Principal Shairp has, indeed, claimed that 
poetry itself is as true a form of thinking as 

69 



70 SEEING AND BEING. 

is science in its estimate of external nature; 
and that the place of poetry in the present 
order of things in our universe was not made 
by the conceit of man, but was intended by 
the Maker of this order. He is sure that, as 
Wordsworth claims, poetry is "the breath 
and finer spirit of all knowledge," and " im- 
mortal as the mind of man." Yet, in this 
view of the case, it is none the less true that 
the poetry of nature is not in nature itself, 
but rather in the poet-observer of nature; 
and that it is mainly by the power of asso- 
ciation that the poetic teachings of nature 
are revealed to the observer who is possessed 
of the poetic spirit. " No eye can see deeply 
into the meaning of nature unless it has also 
looked as deeply into the recesses of the hu- 
man heart, and felt the full gravity of man's 
life and destiny. It is only when seen over 
against these, that nature renders back her 
profounder tones." 

The poetic spirit is that spirit which invests 
the things of nature with the emotions of 
the human heart; which looks down through 



SEEING AND BEING 7 1 

that which is seen into that which is thought 
and felt: 

"And as imagination bodies forth 
The form of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

But there are many who have the poet's soul 
who lack the poet's pen; and to them it is 
that the truest " poems of places " are the 
unwritten associations of the scenery upon 
which they look. 

The poetic sense will invest all scenery 
with such associations of fact or of fancy as to 
make every place a place of poems. Ruskin 
bears testimony to this truth out of his own 
experience even as a child. Speaking of his 
intense and joyous love of natural scenery, 
he says : " It was never independent of as- 
sociated thought. Almost as soon as I could 
see or hear, I had got reading enough to give 
me associations with all kinds of scenery ; 
and mountains, in particular, were always 
partly confused with those of my favorite 
book, Scott's "Monastery;" so that Glenfarg 



72 SEEING AND BEING. 

and all other glens were more or less en> 
chanted to me; filled with forms of hesitat- 
ing creed about Christie of the Clint Hill, 
and the monk Eustace; and with a general 
presence of White Lady every where/' So 
it is, in a lesser or larger degree, with every 
lover of nature; his perception of beauty in 
nature is dependent chiefly on the associa- 
tions with which his poetic sense invests the 
place of his observing. 

There are associations of scenery which 
grow out of the lessons of history; and just 
in proportion as the man of poetic soul is 
informed in these lessons is the scenery about 
him transfused with their glory and imbued 
with their inspirations. The arid wastes of 
desolated Egypt have fullest meaning to him 
who reads in the mighty monuments which 
tower above those wastes, the story of the 
Pharaohs and the shepherd kings; of the 
priests of Isis and Osiris; 

"Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, 
That laughing queen that caught the world's great 
hands; " 



SEEING AND BEING. 73 

of all the legendary rulers of the land of 
Mizraim from Menes to the Ptolemies: 

"Till back upon his awestruck soul 
A thousand ages seem to roll." 

The fields of Marathon and of Marston Moor 
and of Waterloo have a meaning in the light 
of their history which makes, the scenery 
about them vocal with the praise of noble 
deeds. And who could look upon the scen- 
ery of Palestine but in the glow of its sacred 
history — 

"Those holy fields 
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, 
Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailed, 
For our advantage, on the bitter cross" ? 

Nor is it alone in the great events of the 
ages that local scenery has acquired its more 
precious historic associations. There are few 
places even here in our own new country 
which have not some neighborhood tradition 
to illumine them, or which have not been 
brightened or shaded by the pen of a well- 
known writer. This it is which gives an 



74 SEEING AND BEING. 

added value to the " Poems of Places," the 
" Nooks and Corners of the New England 
Coast," "Across the Continent/' "The Great 
South," and the various hand-books of travel, 
which have clustered the historic, the legen- 
dary, and the other poetic associations of dif- 
ferent American localities. He indeed is 
poorly fitted for the truest enjoyments of 
summer or of winter travel who is unfamiliar 
with those records of facts and fancies which 
combine to irradiate the scenery of his route 
and of his resting-places. 

But history is never so dear to us as mem- 
ory. No associations with those t>f whom 
we know only in story can so vocalize the 
poetry of our surroundings as do the recol- 
lections of our own former days of joy or 
sadness in that locality, and of our fellow- 
ship there with those whom we loved, and 
from whom we are now separated. 

"Glad sight whenever new with old 

Is joined, through some dear home-born tie ! 
The life of all that we behold 
Depends upon that mystery. 



SEEING AND BEING. 7$ 

Vain is the glory of the sky, 

The beauty vain of field and grove, 

Unless, while with admiring eye 
We gaze, we also learn to love." 

It is because that strip of low sandy beach 
just over the bay yonder, with the vast ocean 
stretching beyond it, was in the line of our 
childhood's vision as we looked toward the 
rising sun, morning after morning, that its 
every glistening atom has now a separate 
story for us on our occasional return to its 
neighborhood. It is for what we remember 
out of the past, rather than for what we see in 
the present, that there is such a halo of pre- 
ciousness around the revisited homestead : — 

" The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wild- 
wood; 
And every loved spot which our infancy knew." 

Nor is it from childhood only that there 
come memories which pervade the surround- 
ing scenery with hallowed associations. 

"The spot where love's first links were wound, 
That ne'er are riven, 
Is hallowed down to earth's profound, 
And up to heaven ! " 



76 SEEING AND BEING. 

And no sorrow's shade can wholly shut out 
light from the place where our joys were 
multiplied by being shared. 

4 'All along the valley, where thy waters flow, 
I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago. 
All along the valley, while I walked to-day, 
The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls 

away; 
For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed 
Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the 

dead ; 
And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree, 
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me." 

That sail upon the river; that opening in 
the woods; that pathway under the cliffs; 
that sweep of mountain landscape in its 
ever-changing light and shade; that brook- 
side walk; that moss-hung and fern-carpeted 
grotto; that elm-studded meadow, — how re- 
fulgent is each with the light of other days ; 
how each recalls presences and voices which 
we remember with gladness. 

" In spots like this it is, we prize 
Our memory, feel that she hath eyes." 



SEEING AND BEING. 77 

There are associated memories in the scen- 
ery of places we have never visited before. 
The likeness to other scenery calls up the 
kindred recollections of those localities. 
These mountains are so like those we used 
to sit and watch under the drifting clouds. 
That is almost the same meadow view which 
stretched away from our home window. It 
was on just such a shore as this that we 
looked out upon the ocean with a never-to- 
be-forgotten companion. 

" Break, break, break, 

At the foot of thy crags, O sea ! 
But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
Will never come back to me." 

And if nothing else is familiar, the sky 
above us is the same as always. That sunset 
in its gorgeousness seems the very one that 
our happy party looked at together so long 
ago, when we helped each other to its enjoy- 
ment. And that full moon, with its fleeting 
silver clouds, lights us back to the war-time 
nights we passed with a friend who was 
dearer far than life, as we lay together on the 



78 SEEING AND BEING. 

open field looking up into the blue sky, and 
talking of to-morrow's hopes and fears. Even 
the crowded city has this bit of scenery, with 
its varied and yet unvarying associations. 

" O blue sky ! it mindeth me 
Of places where I used to see 
Its vast unbroken circle, thrown 
From the far pale-peaked hill 
Out to the last verge of ocean — 
As by God's arm it were done 
Then for the first time ; with the emotion 
Of that first impulse on it still." 

But, after all, the best associations of natu- 
ral scenery are the associations of truth; 
the associations not of history nor of mem- 
ory merely, but of truth — of immutable truth 
that takes hold of the past, the present, and 
the future. There is truth pictured in all 
nature, even in the commonest phases of na- 
ture; and poetry is the heart's view of truth. 

Good Dr. Bushnell writing to a daughter 
away from home, in an unattractive region, 
for a winter's visit, urged her to invest the 
common things about her with the associa- 



SEEING AND BEING. 79 

tions of truth. " Learn how," he said, "to 
extort enjoyments and pleasures out of com- 
mon-places. You have to put on all your 
screws of pressure, and make the meager 
things give out their riches ; — on the weather, 
just as various and lively in a dull country 
as anywhere, whistling to keep its courage 
up ; on the trees, stripping naked and stiffen- 
ing their muscle to fight the winter out; on 
the stumps of the stumpy fields, — good sym- 
bols of written history, hiding its roots, and 
dead and gone as to its tops; on the river, 
meandering most where it has the dullest 
motion, — just as lazy people go farthest be- 
cause they are going nowhere ; ... on the 
chickens, pecking their food with the same 
tool they fight with, just as silly mankind 
bipeds make their purveyings and economies 
the same thing as the great fight of life; on 
the pigs' tails, spiraling in the curl always 
one way, — showing one more evidence of 
the uniformity of law; or, if they have been 
cut off, how the lines of beauty once gone 
can never be restored. . . . Stir up, touch 



80 SEEING AND BEING. 

off, dramatize, and make alive everything. 
The very poverty of your rights and condi- 
tions will thus become your riches. There 
is even a landscape in a quagmire, if only we 
had eyes to see it. And it is a great thing 
to have eyes! A winter spent in getting 
eyes will be worth more than all the hundred 
eyes of Argus filled gratis with pretty sights." 
If there are associations of truth in the 
winter scenery of a farm-yard and a quag- 
mire, who shall fail to find the associations 
of truth in his resting-place at the seaside or 
in the country, in the midsummer? Such 
observing it is which 

" Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 

The truest poetry in the observing and in- 
vesting of nature is that poetry which 

" Looks through nature up to nature's God." 

This was the earlier poetry of the race, which 
showed us how — 

" The morning stars sang together, 
And all the sons of God shouted for joy." 



SEEING AND BEING. 8 1 

This it was which caused the Psalmist to 
sing:— 

" The heavens declare the glory of God ; 
And the firmament sheweth his handy work ; " 

"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy 
fingers, 
The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; 
What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? 
And the son of man, that thou visitest him ?" 

" The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; 
The world, and they that dwell therein." 

" His foundation is in the holy mountains." 

" In his hand are the deep places of the earth ; 
The heights of the mountains are his also. 
The sea is his, and he made it ; 
And his hands formed the dry land." 

The mountains uplift the thoughts toward 
God. The sea gives a suggestion of his in- 
finity. "The sky is distant, but the sea is 
near. We can walk down to the shore and 
lay our hands upon its waters; and when we 
do so, we feel as if we touched the feet of 

Jehovah ; as if we saw the very fields of im- 
6 



82 SEEING AND BEING. 

mensity and eternity, and held within our 
grasp the lines that bind us to another life." 
There are associations of God's presence 
with every phase of natural scenery; and he 
who looks at mountain, or forest, or ocean, or 
plain, without recognizing and rejoicing over 
these associations, lacks the true poet's soul 
and the true poet's eye. On the contrary, 
he who notes and heeds them finds comfort, 
as well as poetry, in them everywhere. 

" Listen alone beside the sea, 

Listen among the woods ; 

Those voices of twin solitudes 
Shall have one sound alike to thee. 

Hark where the murmurs of thronged men 

Surge and sink back, and surge again, — 
Still the one voice of wave and tree." 



VIII. 

THE UNSEEN AS A CHARM OF 
THE SEEN 



" Nothing can be true which is either com- 
plete or vacant/' says Ruskin, in his com- 
ments on art; "every touch is false which 
does not suggest more than it represents, 
and every space is false which represents 
nothing." William M. Hunt once gave as a 
reason for the "charming" and "poetic" 
character of a painting by Corot, " It is be- 
cause it is not what people call a finished 
painting. There is room for imagination in 
it. It is poetic. Finish up, as they call it, 
make everything out clear and distinct, and 
anybody sees all there is, in about a minute. 
A minute is enough for a picture of that sort, 
and you never want to look at it again." 

Here is a truth which is applicable not only 
to the realm of art, but to the whole range 

83 



84 SEEING AND BEING, 

of material and mental vision. That which 
is best and worthiest always has in it some- 
thing to command instant attention, together 
with a suggestion of something beyond. 
"That is the best part of beauty," says Lord 
Bacon, "which apicture cannot express; no, 
nor the first sight of the life." 

It is, in fact, our ability to conceive that 
which is beyond the immediate representa- 
tion given to us of a thing or a thought, that 
marks our superiority to the brute creation. 
Show to a dog, for example, a finished paint- 
ing of another dog, or of a cat, or of a bird, 
and he will recognize the likeness as readily 
as a man could. But show to that dog a 
simple charcoal outline of a dog's figure, on 
a canvas, and it would have no meaning to 
him, while a little child would instantly see 
for what the sketch was intended, and would 
call it "a bow-wow." Why this difference? 
The child has the power of imagination, 
which the dog lacks. The dog recognizes a 
resemblance just so far as it is disclosed to 
him. The child recognizes it by its sugges- 



SEEING AND BEING. 85 

tions. He sees something beyond the mere 
drawing, and mentally fills in the outline with 
a completed figure. The dog not only sees, 
but thinks. He understands that the picture 
is a picture. He will, perhaps, even give 
play to his fancy, and act as if he thought 
the pictured dog were alive, just as a cat will 
play with a ball as though it were a mouse; 
but neither dog nor cat can imagine any- 
thing, — can conceive anything beyond the 
realm of sense. 

Here is where man has pre-eminence; 
for the exercise of the imagination is vastly 
above all mere play of fancy. " Fancy/' says 
Wordsworth, "is given to quicken and be- 
guile the temporal part of our nature; imagi- 
nation, to incite and to support the eternal." 
" Put a moss-rose to the nostrils of a hound," 
says Starr King, "and see if it will awaken, 
through his keen scent, any emotions of 
poetic delight. The senses of an animal re- 
port all that senses themselves can catch ; " 
but there is no possibility, to the mere ani- 
mal, of the reach of imagination into the 



86 SEEING AND BEING. 

realm of the infinite; and it is the suggestion 
of the infinite which gives limitless power to 
a man's thought of something beyond all 
that is seen or defined. 

It is this suggestion of the infinite, which 
makes the line of the far horizon — seen over 
land or sea — so much more impressive than 
the beauties of any limited landscape. " The 
health of the eye seems to demand a hori- 
zon/' says Emerson. "We are never tired, 
so long as we can see far enough." No en- 
closed garden or circumscribed forest or lake 
can uplift and enlarge the soul like the on- 
reaching stretch of the mighty ocean, or of 
a boundless plain. 

"I am willing to let it rest," says Rus- 
kin, "on the determination of every reader, 
whether the pleasure which he has received 
from these effects of calm and luminous 
distance be not the most singular and 
memorable of which he has been conscious ; 
whether all that is dazzling in color, perfect 
in form, gladdening in expression, be not of 
evanescent and shallow appealing, when com- 



SEEING AND BEING. 87 

pared with the still, small voice of the level 
twilight behind purple hills, or the scarlet 
arch of dawn over the dark, troublous-edged 
sea. . . . There is one thing it has, or sug- 
gests, which no other object of sight suggests 
in equal degree, and that is — infinity. It is 
of all visible things the least material, the 
least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the 
earth prison-house, the most typical of the na- 
ture of God, the most suggestive of the glory 
of his dwelling-place." 

" We know that if the earthly house of our 
tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building 
from God, a house not made with hands, 
eternal, in the heavens." Toward that eternal 
dwelling-place of the soul the mind's ima- 
ginings go out with curious longings; and 
whither shall we look more hopefully than 
toward the horizon, with its suggestions of 
infinity beyond? 

" The city's shining towers we may not see 
With our dim earthly vision ; 
For death, the silent warder, keeps the key 
That opes those gates Elysian. 



88 SEEING AND BEING. 

" But sometimes, when adown the western sky 
The fiery sunset lingers, 
Its golden gates swing inward noiselessly, 
Unlocked by silent fingers ; 

" And while they stand a moment half ajar, 
Gleams from the inner glory 
Stream brightly through the azure vault afar, 
And half reveal the story." 

A sermon is never so satisfactory as when 
it leaves us unsatisfied. If its subject seems 
exhausted by the preacher, we feel exhausted 
also. It is the sermon that sets us a think- 
ing, that we prize most in the long run. A 
book, or an essay, is valuable as an intellec- 
tual stimulus only in proportion as it quickens 
our thoughts into regions yet untracked by 
us — or by the writer. The dullest reading in 
the world is a series of axioms. The power 
of poetry is in its suggestiveness ; never in its 
definitions. The man whose mind and heart 
have control over our minds and hearts, is 
the man who evidently feels all that he says 
— and a great deal more. Unless there is in 
his words a suggestion of thought and feel- 



U 

V) 
{ 



SEEING AND BEING. 89 

ing beyond the possibility of expression in 
words, his influence over us is limited to the 
mere measure of his baldest truisms. 

44 Thought is deeper than all speech; 
Feeling deeper than all thought ; 
Souls to souls can never teach 

What unto themselves was taught." 

He who obviously can fully express himself, 
has comparatively little in him that is worthy 
of expression. 

44 Of every noble work the silent part is best: 
Of all expressions, that which cannot be expressed." 

And it is in character, as it is in speech ; 
the something beyond all that can be seen 
and known is that which attracts and most 
delights us in those toward whom our hearts 
are drawn in love and confidence. 

It is, indeed, the finding out at the last 
that there is nothing below the surface, noth- 
ing beyond the obvious, in a character which 
for a time seemed to us full of glorious pos- 
sibilities, that makes the bitterest disappoint- 
ment in many an acquaintanceship, and that 



90 SEEING AND BEING. 

finally destroys the charm of many an an- 
ticipated friendship. When there is real 
depth of character; when there are true and 
noble thoughts and feelings beyond the fath- 
oming of the ordinary acquaintance, — then 
it is that a friend will be more and more 
loved and prized with the passing years, be- 
cause of the ever-fresh disclosures of that 
character and those thoughts and feelings, 
and the ever-renewed intimations of some- 
thing better beyond. 

Lucy Larcom beautifully expresses this 
idea in the imagery of a brook — as a per- 
sonal friend — flashing through the woods 
and hills the suggestions of its yet undis- 
closed attractions. 

"Friend Brook, I hold thee dearest yet for what I do 

not know 
Of thy pure secret things afar, the mystery of thy 

flow 
Out of the mountain caverns, hid by tangled briar 

and fern : 
A friend is most a friend of whom the best remains 

to learn. 



SEEING AND BEING. 9 1 

" New-born each moment, flashing light through 

worn, accustomed ways, 
With gentle hindrance, gay surprise, sweet hurry- 

ings and delays, — 
Spirit that issuest forth from wells of life unguessed, 

unseen, 
A revelation thou of all that holiest friendships 

mean." 

It was of this charm in the character of 
good John Bright that Mr. Gladstone spoke, 
when, after delineating his intellectual great- 
ness, and paying a high tribute to his won- 
derful eloquence, he said, in his splendid 
eulogy of his dead friend : " But his character 
lies deeper than intellect, deeper than elo- 
quence, deeper than anything that can be 
seen upon the surface." And it is always the 
unseen which is the charm of charms in any 
character which unfailingly holds the admira- 
tion, and which unceasingly grows upon the 
affection, of those whom it impresses. 

One of Dr. Bushnell's thought-suggesting 
essays, is entitled " Our Gospel a Gift to the 
Imagination." The idea of it is, that with 
the existing limitations of the human intel- 



92 SEEING AND BEING. 

lect it is quite impossible for us to compre- 
hend spiritual truths in all their fulness ; 
hence the best that God can do for us in this 
line, while we are still in the flesh, is to point 
to us the direction of these truths, and give 
suggestions of them to our sanctified ima- 
ginings. And it is in the exercise of these 
sanctified imaginings that we can gain 
strength for all our duties, under all our 
trials. " Wherefore we faint not ; but though 
our outward man is decaying, yet our inward 
man is renewed day by day. For our light 
affliction, which is for the moment, worketh 
for us more and more exceedingly an eter- 
nal weight of glory ; while we look not at 
the things which are seen, but at the things 
which are not seen : for the things which are 
seen are temporal ; but the things which are 
not seen are eternal." 



XX. 

SEEING THE SIGNS OF COST. 



Whenever we see anything above ground 
that is worth admiring, and that has any 
true stability or hope of permanence, we 
may be sure that there is a great deal below 
the surface just there, as the foundation of 
that which makes so goodly a show before 
our eyes. That which is seen is a sign of 
that which is out of sight, a sign of already 
expended labor and cost. 

Whether it is in the world of nature, or of 
art, or of intellectual attainment, or of per- 
sonal character, or of spiritual life, it is not 
all on the surface, not all in plain sight; nor 
is its full cost to be measured by that which 
is disclosed to view. If it is a graceful elm 
or a wide-spreading oak, you may be sure it 
has roots running down and reaching out 
into the earth below, to give strength and 

93 



94 SEEING AND BEING. 

security to its sturdy trunk and its swaying 
boughs. And it has been at the cost of sum- 
mer suns and winter rains, of striving and 
enduring through long years of slow prog- 
ress, that those roots have attained their 
present hold, and are firm and sure for their 
mission of to-day. 

If it is a majestic mountain rising in gran- 
deur to the clouds, it rests on no quicksands, 
but has a basis broad and firm, and deep as 
the globe's center. And only God can know 
the cost of that mountain's final fixing where 
it stands. The eternal hills were made with- 
out hands, but not without cost. 

If it is a towering monument, or a massive 
pile of buildings, or a bridge spanning river 
and marsh with vast and lofty arches, there ' 
must have been a preliminary sinking of 
shafts, and laying of strong foundations, and 
slow uprearing of subterranean walls, before 
the mighty structure which now commands 
attention began its upward stretch above the 
surface. Beyond the cost of all that is seen, 
there is a suggestion of a former cost, in 



SEEING AND BEING. 95 

making ready a basis for that which is up- 
lifted into sight. 

If it is the finished work of a scholar 
in history or science; if it is a marvel of 
gracefulness and beauty in the sphere of lit- 
erature — poetry or prose; if it is a triumph 
of power in the pulpit, at the bar, on the 
tribune, or in the realm of applied science or 
of professional skill, — all that is shown and 
seen indicates a former outlay, at the cost of 
which this exhibit is before the eyes. The 
success which is attained above the surface 
cannot be accounted for, but by the fact that 
a great deal of preparation for this was made 
below the surface. There must have been a 
cost correspondent with the value of that 
which commands admiration for its worth. 

If, indeed, it be a noble character or a 
saintly life, — a character of strength and 
beauty, of heroic courage and of sublime 
endurance, or a life of holiness and of radi- 
ating sweetness and purity, — it did not come 
by chance, nor was it " reached at a single 
bound ;" it was a matter of growth as well 



96 SEEING AND BEING. 

as of grace ; and the best and the most of 
that which is noted of good in the conduct 
or the countenance of the one admired and 
revered, was wrought silently and slowly, 
out of sight and below the surface. There 
is no greater cost in the universe than the 
cost of a finished character, and the exhibit 
of such a character is a suggestion of such 
a cost. 

Every once in a while some young man 
will be deluded with the idea that he can do as 
good work above ground as those who have 
gone before him, without being at the trouble 
and the delay of all their work below the sur- 
face, that he can have the results of cost with- 
out the cost. He can write smooth-flowing 
rhymes ; why should he not at once be a poet ? 
He has a vivid imagination and a pleasing 
style ; what is there to hinder his now begin- 
ning the preparation of romances that shall 
give him fortune and fame? He finds no 
difficulty in leading a college prayer-meeting, 
or in holding a popular audience with an off- 
hand discourse on some religious theme 



SEEING AND BEING. g? 

which is familiar to him ; is there any reason 
why he should wait and toil for years before 
entering on the work of the gospel ministry ? 
And so in the one sphere or another a young 
man begins his work on the surface — and 
quickly finishes it there; he exhibits what 
has cost him nothing, and it proves to be 
worth — what it cost. As Lord Jeffrey says 
of such unprepared and surface workers: 
"They who begin by effect without labor, 
will end by labor without effect." 

Dr. Holmes, writing of the slow develop- 
ment of Motley's peculiar talents as a his- 
torical writer, says : " It took many years to 
train the as yet undisciplined powers into 
orderly obedience, and to bring the unar- 
ranged materials into the organic connection 
which was needed in the construction of a 
work which should endure. ... It was 
already the high noon of life with him be- 
fore his genius had truly shown itself; if he 
had not lived beyond this period, he would 
have left nothing to give him a lasting name." 
And of those writers who are unwilling to 
7 



98 SEEING AND BEING, 

do the needful work below the surface, and 
to meet its cost, before they venture upon 
pretentious work above ground, this biog- 
rapher adds: "Too many brilliant young 
novel-readers and lovers of poetry, excused 
by their admirers for their shortcomings on 
the strength of their supposed birthright of 
' genius/ have ended where they began; flat- 
tered into the vain belief that they were men 
at eighteen or twenty, and finding out at fifty 
that they were, and always had been, nothing 
more than boys." 

Many an author, or artist, or preacher, is 
a conspicuous failure in his maturity because 
he was not willing to be an inconspicuous 
toiler in his immaturity; because he was not 
ready to pay the cost of preparation for a 
work that should be worth exhibiting. There 
is wisdom in the counsel of one of the keen- 
est of our satirical writers, when he says to 
the average young man of to-day: "I don't 
want to see you try to build a six-story house 
on a one-story foundation." It is not the 
question of the style of the superstructure, 



SEEING AND BEING. 99 

but of the character of the foundation, that 
decides the capability of the building to stand 
in all weather; and a good foundation always 
represents a corresponding cost. 

The lines of expression in every strongly 
marked face, the keenness of glance in every 
speaking eye, and the evidences of manly 
vigor or of womanly tenderness in every 
countenance that commands admiration, are 
always the signs of a cost that cannot be 
evaded in the formation of a noble or a lovely 
character. The truest beauty of the human 
face is never in the red and white of a fair 
complexion or in the clear outlines of sym- 
metrical features ; but it is ever and always 
in the lines of character which disclose the 
improved struggles of a soul within, with all 
the cost that such struggles involve. The 
face is the reflex of character. While the 
character is unformed, the face is incomplete. 
Every step of progress in character leaves 
its impress on the countenance — an impress 
which can come only through progress. 

In the soldier's uniform there is one thing 



IOO SEEING AND BEING. 

that cannot be bought. It is the " service- 
chevron," — the little strip of lace upon the 
sleeve of a veteran, which shows the comple- 
tion of a full term of service. Gold cannot 
purchase it. No favor of friends can secure 
it. Not even the power of the government 
can bestow it. It is gained only at the cost 
of enlistment, of campaigning, and of endu- 
rance unto the end. Hence there is no truer 
or prouder mark of the real soldier than the 
two, three, five, or more service - chevrons 
which mark the veteran of as many periods 
of enlistment. Every line of well-won care 
in the human face is a service-chevron. 

" Every wrinkled, care-worn brow 

Bears the record ' Something done ; ' 
Some time, somewhere, then or now, 
Battles lost, or battles won." 

It was not until Moses had been at the cost 
of forty years' living in the palace, and forty 
years' living in the desert, and of forty days' 
fasting in sacred communion with God in the 
mount, that his face shone with the reflected 
effulgence of the Divine glory, and that his 



SEEING AND BEING. IOI 

very countenance proclaimed the beauty and 
the holiness of the Lord's presence. When 
any of us have had somewhat more than 
now of such preliminary training as w T as thus 
secured to Moses, we may have somewhat 
more in our countenances of the divine light 
which illumined his. Whenever we see an 
approach to that light on a child of God's 
countenance, we may be sure that there has 
been something of this training going on in 
his mind and character. 

The severest toil of all well-doing, and the 
greatest cost of all well-being, must ever be 
below the surface, and out of sight. And 
that which has power or beauty above must 
ever depend on that w T hich has been slowly 
and painfully performed or endured below, 
even, perhaps, at the price of life as well as 
of ease and comfort. "You remember," says 
one, " how corals grow. The reef is not a 
building constructed by them; it is their own 
life that crystallizes within them, and it is 
left behind them as they climb upward to- 
ward the light. And as they climb, the sea- 



102 SEEING AND BEING. 

bottom sinks beneath them, and the surface 
seems, perhaps, unattainable to their patient 
labors. Yet by and by it is gained, though 
the coral-makers die in reaching it, and over 
the records of their ceaseless toil appear at 
length the verdant fields and fruitful palms of 
islands that lie like gems upon the bosom 
of the sea." 

Whatever of strength or beauty we see or 
show, represents a cost that is commensurate 
with its admirableness. In the light of this 
truth, we ought neither to begrudge the cost 
which must be paid for any fitting exhibit of 
good before the world, nor fail to give honor 
to those who show that they have already 
paid that cost. 



SYMPATHY AS A MEANS OF 
INSIGHT. 



" Read him again and again," say the edit- 
ors of one of the more important editions of 
Shakespeare's completed works; "and then 
if you do not like him, surely you are in 
some manifest danger not to understand 
him. ,, And that declaration involves a truth 
of very wide application. Unless you really 
like a person, of any intense or profound 
personality, you will not be likely to under- 
stand his words or himself. Without the 
insight which sympathy gives, you cannot 
penetrate the recesses of his mind and char- 
acter so as to know him as he is, and to un- 
derstand his sayings and his doings as he 
intends them. 

The common thought is that, in order to 

to come into sympathy with a man, and to 

103 






104 SEEING AND BEING, 

like him heartily, you must first know him 
thoroughly and understand him as he is; but 
the truer truth is, that in many a case the 
sympathy and liking must precede the un- 
derstanding; and that the worthier one is of 
being loved and honored, the more difficulty 
there is of understanding him until you do 
love him, or until in some way you come 
to have a fellow-feeling with him. "You 
must love him, ere to you he will seem wor- 
thy of your love, ,, is a paradox applied by 
Frederick D. Maurice to the method of know- 
ing a friend as you ought to know him. 

There are persons, to be sure, who show 
themselves at the best on the surface, who in 
fact have nothing but surface to show. See- 
ing them once, you know them as well as you 
could know them if you were to see them a 
thousand times. There is nothing to be won- 
dered at or questioned over in their case; 
there is no mystery there; no need of the 
insight of sympathy to give you an under- 
standing of them, and of their sayings and 
doings. You like them or you dislike them 



SEEING AND BEING. 105 

— or you have no sense of either like or dis- 
like in their case — at the start; and you have 
never a reason, afterward, to change your 
opinion of them; for you can never have any 
different basis of opinion. 

But, again, there are other persons who 
show very little of themselves on the surface, 
who have depths of character not to be fath- 
omed at a glance. You are conscious that 
you do not understand them fully to begin 
with; and the more you see of them, and 
study them, the less confident you are of your 
real acquaintance with their main character- 
istics, or their methods of thought and habits 
of feeling; the surer you are that there is a 
great deal yet to be learned about them before 
you can know them thoroughly. 

They may be exceedingly winsome in their 
manners and bearing, yet they are unap- 
proachable beyond a certain point. Or, they 
may be in a measure repellent to you, and yet 
you are held to their persistent study by an 
undefined sense of their hidden power. These 
are the sort of persons who can never be un- 



106 SEEING AND BEING. 

derstood except through the insight of sym- 
pathy, who must be thoroughly appreciated 
before they can even be studied to advantage. 
Unless you come to be at one with them in 
feeling, if not in thought, you can never know 
them at their best, or know them as they are. 

It is not the coarser, but the finer, fiber of 
the soul that is covered over from the outer 
gaze. It is the gentler, lovelier side of a 
refined nature that shrinks from exposure to 
every eye. There are hearts that ache for 
love and sympathy that cannot ask for either 
love or sympathy. Timid and sensitive, with 
all their longing for friendship and fellowship 
of soul, they cannot give a single look or 
word of personal interest or attachment where 
affection for and sympathy with them is not 
already manifest. Even when their hearts 
are full to bursting of kindly feeling, they 
cannot give it such expression in formal 
words as will make it plain to the unsympa- 
thetic ear: 

" For words, like nature, half reveal 
And half conceal the soul within." 



SEEING AND BEING. 107 

The wealth of affection and the depth of 
tenderness in their warm hearts can never 
be recognized except through the insight of 
sympathy. 

And there are heart struggles in some 
strong natures which mark the outer man 
with a forbidding ruggedness that turns away 
all thought of tenderness as a possibility in 
him, and that even shuts out from the ordinary 
observer the idea of his being one to confide 
in trustfully. Only the insight of sympathy 
can give an understanding of that man as he 
is; but that insight would change distrust 
into confidence, and suspicion into pitying 
admiration. 

" The workings of his brain, 
And of his heart, thou canst not see. 
What looks to thy dim eyes a stain, 

In God's pure light may only be 
A scar brought from some well-won field 
Where thou wouldst only faint and yield. 

" The look, the air, that frets thy sight, 
May be a token that, below, 
The soul has closed in deadly fight 
With some infernal, fiery foe, 



1 08 SEEING AND BEING. 

Whose glance would scorch thy smiling grace, 
And cast thee shuddering on thy face." 

As it is in these extreme cases, of the ex- 
ceedingly sensitive and the sorely beset heart, 
so it is in a greater or lesser degree with the 
best phase and the larger wealth of every 
nature. The more there is to be known in a 
character, or to be understood in a career, 
the smaller is the share of it that can be 
known at the start. It is the depths of a 
soul that are necessarily farthest from the 
surface. It is that which is best worth hav- 
ing that is not proffered with an open hand 
to everybody. And the larger measure, the 
deeper depths, the richer treasures, of every 
character, are to be discerned only through the 
insight of sympathy. Not until we are fairly 
alongside of such a nature, having a fellow- 
feeling with it, and judging it with a kindly 
and even partial interest, can we know it 
as it is. 

" No soul can ever clearly see 

Another's highest, noblest part, 
Save through the sweet philosophy 

And loving wisdom of the heart." 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 09 

It is sympathy, not mere affection, that has 
the discerning insight which makes clear to 
the observer that which others cannot under- 
stand in the character he notes or studies. 
To love another is not necessarily to under- 
stand the nature and the moods and methods 
of the object of one's affection. But sym- 
pathy perceives at a glance the full meaning 
of that which is a mystery to even a loving 
eye. Yet where there is entire sympathy 
there will also be a certain liking, as an ac- 
companiment or consequence of that sympa- 
thy ; although, on the other hand, the sincerest 
love does not, as a matter of course, secure 
sympathy. There may be love without sym- 
pathy; but where there is sympathy there 
will be love. It is the lack of sympathy 
w T hich makes so much of unhappiness be- 
tween some who love one another dearly. 

No one but a mother, for example, can 
really understand a mother's thoughts and 
hopes and anxieties. But a true mother can 
understand every other true mother, within 
the sphere of truest motherhood. She knows 



I IO SEEING AND BEING. 

just what that mother as a mother does, or 
wants to do, and w r hy. It is not their like 
experiences that give her this understanding; 
for she may have never been in precisely the 
same circumstances as the other; but it is 
their common basis of feeling, their heart- 
likeness — not their heart-oneness — that gives 
her this insight. 

So, also, it is with a veteran soldier. He 
alone can fully understand the thoughts and 
natural conduct of a man under fire, of a 
man bracing himself up to face death with 
seeming unconcern while every nerve is on 
a quiver. So, again, it is with a person of 
extreme sensibility, of exceeding tenderness 
of conscience; seeing in another that which 
might even be judged as affectation or sheer 
folly, he perceives it to be the most natural 
and unavoidable thing in the world, although 
he never did or thought of doing such a 
thing himself. He understands it all, not 
because he has been through it all, but be- 
cause he is, by his very nature, in sym- 
pathy with the sufferer, and realizes that, 



SEEIXG AND BEING. 1 1 1 

in like circumstances, he might feel and do 
the same. 

We know just why that man is so quick to 
take offense, on an occasion when some 
might think there was no need of being ruf- 
fled. We know why that other man twists 
and writhes with annoyance under that non- 
sense in the pulpit or that discord in the 
choir. We know what that shrinking shy- 
ness means, on the part of one who might 
be boldly confident in that company. We 
know the significance of that pale face and 
those compressed lips, or of that enforced 
gayety and show of indifference, when to 
others there seems nothing to be explained. 
We know what is implied by those uncon- 
scious references to the bitterness of life, or 
the losses greater than those from death. 
We know how much of fixity of purpose 
underlies those apparent varying moods, and 
we even read the causes of many a special 
mood. 

How do we know all these things? Not 
from our study of the cases under obser- 



1 1 2 SEEING AND BEING. 

vation, but from our fellow-feeling, at that 
particular point, with the persons observed. 
It is the insight of sympathy just there which 
shows to us more than others know, more 
than close study could possibly have revealed 
to us. 

How often has it proved, that one whose 
course has been to us a contradiction and a 
bewilderment stands out before us, all at 
once, in simple consistency, through our 
coming into sympathy with him by being 
brought unexpectedly to his stand-point of 
observation, and to his plane of feeling. We 
may have studied him with untiring interest 
before this,; we may have been sincerely at- 
tached to him ; but neither our study nor our 
affection gave us an understanding of him. 
Being brought, however, into sympathy with 
him, coming to feel with him — or to perceive 
just how he feels — all that has before been a 
mystery is resolved as by an instant blaze of 
light from heaven. Sympathy of feeling 
makes clear what neither word nor thought 
could convey or comprehend. So it is always ; 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 1 3 

in order to learn most about another, we must 
come to feel with him, rather than to study 
about him. 

What then ? Can we never know a person 
until we are in full sympathy with him ? Must 
our hearts always go out in loving interest 
toward another before our minds can be fully 
informed as to his qualifications and worthi- 
ness? Not quite this; for there are very 
many who have no hidden nature, and whom 
we can understand as well as we need to 
know them, without any special insight of 
sympathy. But it is important for us to 
realize that there is no key to the treasures 
of another's soul like sympathy, and that 
some whom we now think lightly of would 
be honored and admired by us, and might 
even be our prized companions or our valued 
helpers, if we could but learn their worth and 
acquire their confidence through the insight 
and the attractiveness of our sympathy. 

Of one thing we may be sure, that that 
which can be known of another's soul, and 
of another's character, and which can be 



1 14 SEEING AND BEING. 

understood of another's conduct and man- 
ners, and methods of speech and thought 
and feeling, only through the insight of sym- 
pathy, is better worth knowing than all that 
appears on the surface. It is the best as well 
as the deepest life of another that is to be 
known through the insight of sympathy. 

And after all, in the study of that which is 
best and noblest and grandest in life or in 
truth, the heart is worth more than the head. 
The insight of sympathy gives more of knowl- 
edge in that realm than the insight of cold 
scholarship. " If any man willeth to do his 
will, he shall know of the teaching," says 
Jesus, of those who would understand the 
mysteries which angels look into wonder- 
ingly. To come into sympathy of purpose 
with the great heart of the loving Saviour is 
to be in the way of knowing even as we are 
known. "Then shall we know if we follow 
on to know the Lord" — as we never can 
know unless we are the Lord's followers. 



XL 

SEEING THROUGH ANOTHER'S 
EYES. 



Many a word or act of another which now 
seems strange or uncalled for would seem 
the most natural thing in the world, — the 
very thing to be said or done, — if only we 
could see the case as the other sees it, if 
only we could look at it through his eyes. 
And many a word or act of ours would have 
a very different look to others, if they could 
see the case through our eyes. 

A fair judgment of our fellows is not com- 
mon, nor is it easily arrived at, because of 
our habit of looking at their course from our 
standpoint instead of from theirs. And for 
the same reason we are misunderstood and 
judged unfairly by them. It seems to us 
very foolish, for example, for a little boy to 
cry his eyes out because his mother wants 

"5 



1 1 6 SEEING AND BEING. 

him to wear fancy stockings, or a plaid cloth 
cap; but if we could know the public senti- 
ment on those points in the world of boy- 
hood outside of his home, we might see that 
actual martyrdom would require hardly more 
of courageous independence and self-abnega- 
tion than would be necessary for that boy's 
standing out in such a matter against the 
opinions of those whose commendation he is 
desirous of securing. 

The dash of bitterness with which some 
excellent persons in humble life will at times 
speak of what are called "the best circles " 
in society, may seem to us to indicate an 
unlovely or an unchristian spirit But if 
only we were made to realize the sense of 
desolateness which comes to one of innate 
refinement, and of noblest aspirations, who 
is shut out by the accident of birth, or 
through the fluctuations of business, from 
those associations and companionships for 
which that person is pre-eminently fitted in 
mind and heart; if only we understood what 
the sense of injustice must be to one who is 



SEEING AND BEING. WJ 

pushed aside and actually looked down upon 
by inferiors, — we should not wonder at any 
show of strong feeling against such misfor- 
tune and unfairness. 

And so all the way along in life. If, on 
the one hand, the man of capital could see 
the laborer's case as the laborer sees it; if, 
on the other hand, the laborer could see the 
capitalist's position as it appears to the capi- 
talist; if the Northern man could borrow the 
Southerner's eyes for but a single glance at 
the Southern question; or if the Southerner 
could but once see social and political ques- 
tions as the Northerner sees them ; if men of 
opposite parties, or of different theological 
views, could look at the truth as their oppo- 
nents look at it; if men and women of clash- 
ing opinions could only change eyes for a 
little time, — how much easier it would be for 
all to be fair in their judgments of others, 
how much more there would be of kindly 
and charitable judging! 

In their conduct as well as in their opin- 
ions, others are misjudged by us because of 



1 1 8 SEEING AND BEING. 

our not seeing through their eyes; and simi- 
larly we are misjudged by them. We may 
wonder that a friend does not speak out his 
feelings more heartily, and that if he loves 
us he does not say so. Our emotions play 
visibly on our faces. Our likes and dislikes 
find instant and emphatic expression in words. 
Why is it not so with him ? If we but knew 
the warmth and depth of that friend's affec- 
tion, and the causes which repress its utter- 
ance, we should never ask such a question 
as that; we should never think of calling 
him cold and unresponsive. 

He, on the other hand, may wonder that 
we are so intense and demonstrative, and 
may even question if our feelings can be as 
profound and controlling as his own. If he 
understood the pressure that is on us from 
our very innermost nature, he would never 
think of saying that we show more than we 
feel, or that we are intentionally too free and 
outspoken. 

There are hearts which ache almost to 
breaking because they cannot speak, know- 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 1 9 

ing all the time that they are counted lacking 
in real warmth and true tenderness because 
of their enforced silence. And there are 
hearts which grieve because they cannot be 
silent when their unavoidable outbursts of 
feeling are sure to be misunderstood, and to 
give discomfort to dearly loved ones. Oh, if 
these different natures could but change eyes 
while passing judgment on each other! 

A certain view of a question of duty 
prompts one person to words and actions 
toward a friend, which are most untimely as 
that friend sees the case, but which are the 
only wise and proper course as the person 
himself sees it. A harsh judgment follows, 
where heartiest approval would be given if 
only the offended one could see through the 
eyes of the unintentional offender. One per- 
son has doubts which another person cannot 
conceive of as possible. One has temptations 
unknown to his immediate fellow. One has 
fears to which another is a stranger. One 
magnifies dangers which another brushes 
away with contempt. One is familiar with 



120 SEEING AND BEING. 

important facts bearing on the case in ques- 
tion, while another knows nothing about 
those facts. If in every case of misunder- 
standing between two persons, or of mis- 
judging of one by another, each person could 
see the environment, the difficulties, the per- 
plexities, and the influencing thoughts and 
opinions, of the other, how much of injustice 
would be obviated; how much of pain and 
regret would be relieved or removed! 

Did your husband's course this morning, 
as he left the house, appear regardless of 
your comfort or feelings ? Do you think that 
he really intended to be neglectful or unkind? 
If you could look at the whole thing just as 
he saw it, or as it is now seen by him, would 
it not probably be plain that it was his mo- 
mentary absorption in thought which made 
him seem to disregard your welfare; or that 
the words he spoke were taken by you in a 
very different sense from what he intended, 
and that already he regrets his unfortunate 
speech more than you do? Ought the mat- 
ter then to weigh with you, as if it indicated 



SEEING AND BEING. 121 

your husband's estrangement? Possibly it 
seems to you that you were slighted at the 
house of an acquaintance when last you 
called there. It may even appear that you 
were rudely treated. After all, do you think 
that this looked so to the acquaintance whose 
conduct gave you offense? Do you suppose 
she purposed an affront? If not, then take 
it all as you believe she designed it, rather 
than as it might have seemed on its face. 

Was a certain remark or action of your 
friend on a recent occasion capable of being 
understood as indicating another estimate of 
you from that which he has in many ways 
evidenced? Did it look as if he were less 
considerate of your known preferences and 
convictions, and of your interests and feel- 
ings, than you have always counted him? 
Before you pass judgment on that remark or 
action, try to look at it through the eyes of 
your friend. Remember all that you have 
known of him as your friend, and ask if it is 
to be supposed that he would intend to do 
what this thing taken by itself would seem to 



122 SEEING AND BEING. 

mean. Unless you believe that you have 
been mistaken in him hitherto, and that he 
is now unworthy of your confidence, pity 
him for his blundering, and be sure that he 
is groaning over it as he recalls its possible 
misinterpretation by you. How much trouble 
among friends and acquaintances would be 
saved, by this looking through one another's 
eyes, in the process of judgment! 

That which another has done, we ought 
always to seek to see as it probably appears 
to him, rather than as it might appear to us. 
And it is another's duty to look at that which 
we have done as it would appear in our sight, 
rather than as it would naturally appear in 
his sight. Each observer is to see the other's 
doings through the other's eyes. By such a 
method of seeing, all danger of injustice in 
judging one another in this world would 
practically be abrogated. 

The surest cure of a habit of unjust judg- 
ing is a sense of personal and loving respon- 
sibility for those who are under judgment. 
A true mother can, for instance, judge her 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 23 

own child without harshness; for she not 
only loves him, but she feels a responsibility 
for him. If he is wrong, she cannot but suf- 
fer for it. A true husband will not judge his 
wife harshly; for she is one with himself, 
"and no man ever yet hated his own flesh." 
He " nourisheth and cherisheth it. ,, He looks 
at his wife, as at himself, through charitable 
eyes. He is sure to put a favorable con- 
struction on her words and deeds, as on his 
own. Jonathan could look at the things of 
David through the eyes of David; for "he 
loved him as his own soul," and their inter- 
ests were identical through love. So always 
with the truest and best of friends. So it 
ought to be among all who are the followers 
of a common Saviour. Not only are they to 
"love one another," but they are to "bear 
one another's burdens," and to count them- 
selves "members one of another." 

If a Christian brother or a Christian friend 
is at fault, we who are one with him are at 
fault also. Let this thought prompt us to 
judge him always with that Christian love 



124 SEEING AND BEING. 

which taketh not account of evil, which be- 
lieveth all things to be good, which hopeth all 
things to be good, and which rejoiceth not in 
unrighteousness. Let us look at his course 
through his eyes, and so take as favorable a 
view of it as he could. 



XII. 

THE LIGHT-SHEDDING POWER OF 
A SHADE. 



The practical value of a light is never at 
its best when it shines directly into the eyes 
of those who need its help, or when it is 
without the gain of some accompanying or 
intervening shade. To look at the sun is 
to bring darkness to the eyes. To face a 
glare of light in the night is to be blinded 
to all else. 

One instinctively shields his eyes with his 
hand, as he looks out over a landscape at 
noonday; or as he enters a brilliantly lighted 
hall in the evening, where he would sweep 
his gaze over the whole house in order to 
comprehend the audience as an entirety. A 
shaded light is, indeed, a more helpfully 
illuminating light, as well as a more grateful 
light, to human eyes as they are; and so it 

125 



126 SEEING AND BEING. 

is that we find the light-shedding power of 
a shade. 

It is not that a shade really increases the 
light; for in fact it lessens it. But it is that 
a shade increases the value of the light by- 
improving its available quality, and by mak- 
ing the observer the more sensible of its ad- 
vantages. Persons put translucent curtains, 
or shades, before their windows, with the idea 
that they thereby have more light — that is a 
better light — in the room. Lamps and gas- 
jets in a library, or in a sitting-room, are sur- 
rounded by ground-glass or porcelain globes, 
or shades, in order that their light may be 
softened and diffused for the greater benefit 
of those who see by it. 

It is for utility as w r ell as for beauty that 
the windows of a church, or of a cathedral, 
are stained, or tinted, or shaded, so as to pre- 
vent the full glare of the sunlight pouring in 
through them, to dazzle the eyes of those on 
whom it shines directly; for there, as every- 
where, the light needs the shading which shall 
be a means of its wise shedding or diffusing. 



SEEING AND BEING, \2J 

It is in the mental, the moral, and the spir- 
itual realm, as it is in the material, that the 
light-shedding power of a shade is mani- 
fested. The man whose knowledge of any 
subject of which he treats is not shaded by 
a modest distrust of his own attainments, 
gives no such helpful light on that subject as 
is diffused by the more cautious and discrimi- 
nating statements of one who knows so much 
about it that he realizes how much there is 
for him yet to learn concerning it. 

If you ask a young doctor, a young lawyer, 
a young artist, a young scientist, a question 
in any department of his profession, the 
quick and confident way in which he will 
glare the light of his knowledge upon you, 
tends to dazzle your eyes and hinder your 
seeing. Whereas if you were to refer that 
same subject to a master in its line, he would 
be likely to treat it as presenting an open 
question; and the shaded light of his greater 
knowledge turned upon it with gradually dis- 
closing power would enable you to see it 
almost as he saw it. And so in all the realm 



128 SEEING AND BEING. 

of intellect, an unshaded light will dazzle or 
repel, where a shaded light will shed an 
illuminating radiance. 

Any good trait or virtue loses illuminating 
power through its unshaded glaring. Cour- 
age is a repellent rather than a winsome trait 
if it lack the shade of a certain tremulous 
self-questioning. The preacher, the orator, 
the singer, who comes before a large audi- 
ence with the light of unhesitating assurance 
in his face and bearing, fails to beam in upon 
the very hearts of those who* hear him, as 
he might through the refining shade of a 
reverent timidity. 

Diana, standing out as an electric light of 
chastity, sheds no such glow of womanly 
modesty, in all her sphere, as radiates from 
the true woman, whose many virtues shade 
one another, and diffuse illumination without 
making its focal center dazzlingly eye-smiting. 
Justice, honesty, frankness, enthusiasm, sin- 
cerity, needs, each, some shade of a balancing 
quality, to soften and mellow its light so that 
it shall glow without glaring. 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 29 

Even the choicest spiritual graces shine 
clearest and most attractively through, or 
from under, a shade. Faith cannot seem 
faith except in one who knows something of 
doubt. Hope beams brightest when it is 
hope against hopelessness. Love grows in 
its pre-eminence in shedding its rays unstint- 
edly on the unloving. Self-sacrifice must be 
seen through the shade of the thanklessness 
and ingratitude of its recipients, in order to 
be seen at its best. Christian joy and Chris- 
tian cheerfulness can never give such light, 
when unshaded, as they give when the shade 
of sanctified sorrow and of saintly sadness 
is over them. The very light of the Divine 
Presence had to be shaded in the Incarna- 
tion, that it might illumine instead of blind 
the natural eye. 

" As one who entereth by night a room 
Where sufferers lie 
Shadeth his lamp to suit the languid eye; 
So doth the Christ draw nigh 
Unto our world of gloom. 
The light of life he beareth, and doth stand 
Shading it tenderly with pierced hand, 
9 



1 30 SEEING AND BEING. 

Lest the full glare 
Should cause not to see, but stare. 
Yet through the nail-prints some sweet rays Divine 
Will gently shine ; — 
Dawn which doth for the day prepare." 

Do you wonder, sometimes, that just when 
and where you would fain be a means of 
light to others, you are yourself brought into 
the shadow, so that the light you might have 
given is dimmed or covered? That may be 
God's way of increasing your light-power in 
the direction of your purposes and your 
prayers in his service. God's strength is 
made perfect in weakness. God's light shines 
clearest in and through the shadow. In 
thanking God for the privilege of letting 
your light shine as he has commanded, fail 
not to recognize the blessing he has bestowed 
upon you in the light-shedding shade where- 
with he has covered you. 



XIII. 

THE SOFTENING LIGHT OF 
REFLECTION, 



Did yoa ever sit by the hour and look at 
the beauties of a landscape as shown in a 
" Claude Lorraine" glass? If so, you may 
have wondered why it was that the reflection 
of that landscape seemed more vivid and 
more lovely than the landscape itself. If 
you will consider the peculiarities of such a 
glass, the reason of its power will be appar- 
ent to you. 

A Claude Lorraine glass is a small rec- 
tangular glass plate, say six inches by eight, 
with a convex surface, and the under side 
blackened. It is ordinarily enclosed, or 
framed, in a folding case, with a black lining 
to the cover, to shield it from the light's full 
glare. To use it, one must stand with his 
back to the landscape, and in the open glass 

131 



132 SEEING AND BEING. 

before him see the reflection of the points of 
interest he would observe. This turning 
away of the face, together with the limiting 
framework of the case, fixes the looker's at- 
tention on the special bit of scenery under 
examination, and shuts away all competing 
attractions. The convex surface reduces 
and intensifies the reflection. The dark 
background and the shielding cover soften 
it without destroying its colors. The result 
is, that one has before him, in such a glass, 
a little picture of more surpassing loveliness 
than the hand of man ever painted. 

Looking into such a glass one is surprised 
indeed to find how much of beauty he has just 
turned his back on. It may be a bit of lake 
or mountain scenery, or of cloud effect, which 
now seems too beautiful for reality. Or it is a 
turn of the country road which the observer 
is passing; an opening in the woods; a little 
wayside mill with its rustic surroundings. 
Perhaps it is only the front yard, with its 
pretty shrubbery, of his own home; or the 
rear of his house, with its barn and sheds 



SEEING A ND BEING. 1 3 3 

and meadow lots beyond. Whatever it is, it 
seems transfigured in that glass. There is a 
delicacy of outline, a softness of surface, an 
intensity of color, a picturesqueness of ar- 
rangement, and a delightful harmony of all 
the details there, never perceived until now. 
It does not take long for one who uses the 
Claude Lorraine glass to come to the con- 
clusion that without its help it is impossible 
to realize the fullest beauties of the simpler 
and more home-like landscape — however one 
may do without it in his study of grander 
and more imposing scenery. 

There is a lesson in this transfiguring 
power of the Claude Lorraine glass. As 
we stand face to face with the world, in the 
full glare of its dazzling light, we hardly stop 
to study any of its pictures in their separate 
distinctness. Forms flit confusedly before 
our eyes. The very multitude and variety 
of sights are bewildering. Scenes most famil- 
iar to us are by their very commonness least 
noted. No one thing is pre-eminent and of 
absorbing interest. But we are called in 



1 34 SEEING AND BEING. 

some way to turn our back on what we have 
looked at thus carelessly. New surround- 
ings shut us in more closely than before, and 
limit the range of our thoughts and feelings. 
There is a darkened background to our mental 
vision. The dazzling light is gone. Perhaps 
the trial or sorrow bulges up before us from 
some surface plane of our observation, and 
changes the focal center of the reflections we 
study. How different then the social scenery 
with which we thought ourselves familiar! 
The persons, the places, the associations, of 
our immediate sphere in life, how changed ! 

A loving son away at school, or a newly 
married daughter at a distance from father 
and mother, wonders that the old home could 
really have been as lovely as it now appears 
in the softened light of the mental Claude 
Lorraine in which its reflections are viewed. 
And even when through a great bereavement 
we are compelled to turn our faces away 
from some sacred friendship, which we prized 
dearly while we looked upon it directly, and 
all our attention is newly centered on those re- 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 35 

flections of its delightsomeness which are now 
limited without possibility of change or ex- 
tension, and we look down into the glass of 
memory with its darkened background and 
its shading cover and its intensifying focal 
power, — that transfigured friendship seems 
more beautiful, more precious, more wonder- 
ful, than we had conceived ; and our tempta- 
tion is to start up and turn about and reach 
forward, to take as our own again that which 
we had never appreciated at its fullest worth 
while it was before us face to face. Then, 
realizing the hopelessness of such endeavor, 
we sit down once more with a feeling of calm 
satisfaction that the beautiful reflection of 
that friendship is ours for all time to come; 
and that in the truest sense the friendship 
also is ours more really and more unchan- 
gingly than it could have been before we saw 
its highest attractiveness in the Claude Lor- 
raine of the heart. 

And as there are granted unto us transfig- 
ured reflections of earthly things of beauty 
and value, so there are of things heavenly. 



1 36 SEEING AND BEING. 

Here, while we stand with our faces away 
from the celestial city, with its delights of 

" Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, 
And which entered not into the heart of man, 
Whatsoever things God prepared for them that 
love him;" 

God by his Spirit reveals unto us, in the per- 
son of his Son, and in the teachings of his 
word, the "shadow [or reflection] of good 
things to come/' with the assurance that 
although now we see them as in a glass 
darkly, we shall yet see them face to face. 



XIV. 
HA VING AN EYE FOR TRIFLES. 



When Christiana was in the house of the 
Interpreter, she saw in one of the rooms "a 
man that could look no way but downwards, 
with a muck-rake in his hand. There stood 
also One over his head with a celestial crown 
in his hand, and proffered him that crown for 
his muck-rake; but the man did neither look 
up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, 
the small sticks, and dust of the floor." When 
the meaning of this figure had been explained 
to her, "then said Christiana, ' Oh, deliver me 
from this muck-rake! ' That prayer, said the 
Interpreter, has lain by till it is almost rusty. 
. . . Straws, and sticks, and dust, with most, 
are the great things now looked after." That 
rusty old prayer is worth taking out and oil- 
ing up for fresh use in these days, — Lord, 
deliver us from the muck-rake ! 

i37 



138 SEEING AND BEING. 

This muck-rake using, in preference to 
crown-seeking, has its illustrations in the 
things exclusively of this life, quite as clearly 
as in the things of earth in contrast with 
those of heaven. It is not alone the man 
who lives for money, or for pleasure, or for 
station, or for fame, forgetful of his spiritual 
needs and possibilities, who may be said to 
give more prominence to a muck-rake than 
to a shining crown. Many a man loses the 
best things of his immediate sphere of earthly 
endeavor by just such folly as this; and it is 
in matters of every-day duty and pursuit that 
all of us have reason to pray, Lord, deliver 
us from this muck-rake ! 

Even in money-getting itself, many a man 
misses the crown by too close attention to 
trifles. It is less than a half-truth to say, 
"Take care of the pence; and the pounds 
will take care of themselves." The absurdity 
of that adage was shown in one of the comic 
periodicals, by the picture of a banker sitting 
at his desk in a draught of air, intent on 
holding his loose pennies while the wind was 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 39 

blowing away all his bank-notes. Pennies 
must often be counted as straws or dust, by 
him who is after the pounds. He who can 
"look no way but downwards," and who ex- 
pects to gather his treasure from " the straws, 
the small sticks, and dust of the floor/' will 
never gain the crown of pre-eminence as a 
man of wealth or of business capacity. The 
power of letting the muck-rake alone, of being 
above an absorbed occupation with minor 
and unimportant details, is indispensable to 
successful crown-seeking in all extensive 
business operations. 

This truth is hardly less applicable to small 
spheres than to great ones. There may be 
such a thing as too much attention to scrub- 
bing and sweeping in a household, in com- 
parison with the higher welfare of the family. 
It may be the mother's duty to leave straws 
and sticks ungathered from the floor, instead 
of turning to this service from a sick child's 
bedside, with its crown of reward to a 
mother's faithfulness there. Many of the 
great missionary and philanthropic enter- 



140 SEEING AND BEING. 

prises of the day fail of their • best attain- 
able results because of the muck-rake policy 
which prevails in all their management — 
from the employment of their representative 
agents to the scale of their outreaching un- 
dertakings. They are more intent on saving 
straws than on spending freely for the crown. 
"The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by 
liberal things shall he stand/' And the eye 
of the liberal looks upward at the crown, 
rather than downward at the muck-rake. 

It is not less true in the pursuit of pleasure 
than in that of gain, that the muck-rake is a 
common hindrance to crown-winning. There 
are summer tourists who are so intent on 
the lesser aids to comfort, or taste, or con- 
venience, that they miss utterly the larger 
results of their journeying. The straws of a 
good seat, or of sufficient shade, or of dry 
walking, or of freedom from dust, or of the 
possibility of full dress, so absorb their atten- 
tion, that they fail of getting fine views of 
the mountain, or of the ocean, or of the 
prairie, or of the forest; or of enjoying those 



SEEING AND BEING. 141 

views if they get them. And there is quite 
as much danger indoors as out, in this direc- 
tion. Trying to be always cool, or always 
warm, always free from flies, or always with 
just enough light; trying never to be off 
dignity in a romp with the children; and 
never to be too natural or familiar with visiting 
acquaintances, — will keep one's eyes down- 
ward, and away from the crown. Whether 
we stay at home or go abroad, even if we 
have no desire above that of solid enjoyment 
for the hour, we have need to pray, Lord, 
deliver us from the muck-rake! 

Peculiarly is it true that in the seeking of 
reputation and honor the muck-rake is a 
peril to any man. If we are looking down- 
ward, and gathering the straws and small 
sticks and dust of contemporary criticism, 
we can never win the crown that awaits those 
who are looking upward and moving forward. 
If we would please those of our own day, 
those immediately about us, we must neces- 
sarily adapt our words and works to their 
standard; and by that very course shut our- 



142 SEEING AND BEING. 

selves off from reforming our fellows or of 
improving their standards. But if we would 
have high repute in the future, as reformers, 
or discoverers, or advanced thinkers, it is in- 
evitable that we now leave the straws of popu- 
lar applause, or the sticks and dust of popular 
censure, for some one to gather who prefers 
the acquisitions of the muck-rake to the re- 
ward of the shining crown. 

Here is the difference between the time- 
serving politician and the large-minded state- 
man ; between the man who writes or speaks 
to carry the crowd, and the writer or speaker 
of profound convictions and of ennobled pur- 
pose. Here is the difference between the ar- 
tist who paints or who chisels for immortality, 
and the man who covers the canvas or cuts 
the marble to meet the market, and to win 
ephemeral praise. If a man had no thought 
of reward, or of honor, or of desired attain- 
ment, beyond the life that now is, and from 
his fellow-men, his cry ought to be, Lord, 
deliver me from this muck-rake! 

Even when we have recognized the supe- 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 43 

rior worth of the shining crown, in compari- 
son with the straws and small sticks and dust 
of the floor, and have set ourselves to strive 
for that crown, it requires courage and deter- 
mination and grace to let alone the muck- 
rake and its accumulations. We are tempted 
continually to turn from the crown that we 
may scratch with the rake. 

When we ought to be writing, or teaching, 
or studying, or painting, or sewing, or visit- 
ing, in the line of our mission, and for the 
good of others, we find ourselves all absorbed 
in worrying over the fear that we blundered 
or bungled in our last interview with a friend; 
in thinking over some unkind word that was 
said of us, or to us; in analyzing the pos- 
sible cause of the seeming coldness or es- 
trangement of an acquaintance; in wondering 
how we came to make such a mistake as now 
stands out in our memory; in distorting and 
magnifying the difficulties of success in the 
work which is before us ; and in other ways 
giving the first place in our thoughts to that 
which is unworthy of any place there. Mean- 



144 SEEING AND BEING. 

time, the sermon is unfinished, the magazine 
article is unwritten, the lesson is unstudied, 
the child is neglected or poorly taught, the 
gift for a friend or the adornment of a room 
is incomplete, the money we might have 
earned is lost, the service we owed is unpaid, 
the sick or the needy representative of Christ 
is unvisited, the impenitent sinner is un- 
warned, — all because of our bending down 
over the floor, busy with the muck-rake, 
when our eyes ought to have been uplifted 
to the shining crown, and our whole soul 
absorbed in its winning, or absorbed in the 
work for which that crown is the reward. 
Ah! it is while we are avowedly crown- 
seeking, as well as before we had a sight or a 
thought of the crown, that our prayer needs 
to be, Lord, deliver us from the muck-rake! 
Lord, deliver us from the muck-rake! 

But, after all, it is chiefly in the light in 
which Bunyan looked at this figure, that the 
life of the man with the muck-rake ought to 
be an object of real dread to us. "This is a 
figure of a man of this world," says the 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 45 

Dreamer, "and his muck-rake doth show 
his carnal mind. And whereas thou seest 
him rather give heed to rake up straws, and 
sticks, and the dust of the floor, than to do 
what He says that calls to him from above, 
with the celestial crown in his hand; it is 
to show that heaven is but a fable to some, 
and that things here are counted the only 
things substantial. Now, whereas it was also 
showed thee that the man could look no 
way but downwards, it is to let thee know 
that earthly things, when they are with power 
upon men's minds, quite carry their hearts 
away from God." 

The crown and the muck-rake are in com- 
petition in this life. If we would devote our- 
selves to the one, we must pray against the 
other. Unless we determinedly look upward, 
we shall be looking downward. We must 
be absorbed in contemplation of that which 
is worth living for, and worth dying for; or 
we are likely to be absorbed in that which 
has no value to us whether we live or die. 

Paul recognized this truth long before 
10 



146 SEEING AND BEING. 

Bunyan did. He gave up the muck-rake, 
and all it had brought to him, in exchange 
for the proffered crown. "What things were 
gain to me, these have I counted loss for 
Christ. Yea, verily, and I count all things 
to be loss for the excellency of the knowl- 
edge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I 
suffered the loss of all things, and do count 
them but muck, that I may gain Christ/* 
And rejoicing in his exchange, at the end of 
his course, Paul said, "I have fought the 
good fight, I have finished the course, I have 
kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up for 
me the crown of righteousness, which the 
Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give to me 
at that day : and not only to me, but also to 
all them that have loved his appearing." 



XV. 

WE CANNOT SEE OURSELVES. 



However sharp-sighted a man may be, or 
however skilled in the use of his eyes, he 
cannot see himself. In order to be seen, an 
object must be before the eyes; and no man 
can be before his own eyes. This is cer- 
tainly true of physical sight; and it is even 
truer of mental and spiritual sight. What- 
ever else a man can have directly before his 
eyes for intelligent and discriminating study, 
he cannot have himself there. 

A man may, indeed, see a reflection, or 
image, of himself in a mirror, and may study 
for the time being the face and features and 
form there outlined; but that study of his 
image thus presented will fail to give to a 
man a well-defined mental picture of himself, 
which will abide clearly in his memory, as 
would a mental picture of another person 

H7 



148 SEEING AND BEING, 

whom he had similarly studied. This pecu- 
liarity of human nature it is that was referred 
to by the apostle James, when he said of a 
forgetful hearer of God's word : " He is like 
unto a man beholding his natural face in a 
mirror: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth 
away, and straightway forgetteth what man- 
ner of man he was." 

Many an artist has painted his own por- 
trait from a reflection of himself in a mirror, 
and has in this way made an accurate like- 
ness of himself; but this is simply copying 
the image which the mirror holds before him 
as he paints. But who ever heard of an artist 
painting his own portrait from memory, as 
many a good portrait has been painted by 
artists ? Or, who will say that he can bring 
himself before his own mind's eye, even with 
all the aids to memory which his mirror has 
supplied to him? It is doubtful, indeed, 
whether any one of us would recognize him- 
self, if he were to meet himself on the street, 
in the absence of any peculiarity of dress to 
attract special attention. 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 49 

How surprised we are, for example, to be 
told by one and another that we resemble 
closely a person whom we know well ! In 
some instances this is a discomforting sug- 
gestion, and, again, it is a very gratifying 
one. We may have supposed that we were 
better looking than that person, or we may 
not have supposed that we appeared as well 
as he. And even when we have this clew to 
our looks, we are quite likely to imagine 
that there are differences between him and 
ourselves just at the point where the resem- 
blances are strongest, or that there are re- 
semblances where the differences are most 
marked. 

Of course, when it comes to passing upon 
particular features, or well-defined peculiar- 
ities of outline, we can know that a resem- 
blance or difference exists in a given case; 
but that is only like knowing the letters of 
the alphabet out of which a sentence before 
us is constructed. To see that the nose is of 
a Roman or a Grecian type, that the eyes 
are dark or light, that the cheek-bones are 



ISO SEEING AND BEING. 

high or low, that the hair or beard is worn 
in this way or that, is not to give even the 
faintest suggestion of the effect of the com- 
position of a face as a whole, or of the ex- 
pression which gives to that face its distinctive 
individuality. And only as a man is able to 
discern impartially the true characteristics of 
a countenance before him, — as he could not 
impartially discern the true characteristics of 
his own countenance even if he were to see 
it as his own, — can a man truly see a face as 
it is, whether in reality or in reflection. 

When it comes to the seeing of our mental 
and spiritual personalities, there are added 
difficulties in the way of our seeing ourselves 
clearly, beyond all those which hinder our 
sight of our faces and forms as they are. 
At the best we are dependent upon mirrors 
to give us any mental or spiritual image of 
our real selves; and the mirrors which we 
are likely to count most trustworthy in such 
a matter are, perhaps, those which give only 
a distorted reflection of that which is brought 
before them. 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 5 I 

Whether, for instance, we have a good 
memory, or a correct musical ear, or a dis- 
cerning eye, or a logical mind, or keen sensi- 
bilities, or a refined taste, or a generous spirit, 
is a question that can be settled only by our 
accurate comparison of ourselves so far with 
an absolute standard of measurement; or, 
again, by the judgment and testimony of 
others, who are thoroughly competent to pass 
upon the question. Such a standard, and 
such helpers to a correct judgment, may not 
be available to us ; or they may not be recog- 
nized by us as trustworthy, even if they are 
available. 

What we think about ourselves in any one 
of these lines may be right, or it may be 
wrong. If, however, we are pretty sure that 
our judgment is right, we are not over ready 
to admit that a person who tells us that we 
are wrong just there is better qualified than 
we are to decide the question at issue. Yet 
he may be correct, or he may be incorrect. 
His disagreeing with us does not prove he is 
wrong; nor, indeed, does it prove he is right. 



152 SEEING AND BEING. 

The question is still an open one, whether, 
indeed, we think it ought to be closed in our 
favor or are willing to submit it to others for 
further discussion. 

It is not always that we have too high an 
estimate of ourselves, for we may underesti- 
mate our abilities or attainments in one direc- 
tion or another; but it is that the element of 
our personal interest in the question, and of 
our personal prejudice in favor of our own 
opinion, unfits us to see the facts as they are 
with an impartial eye; or, in other words, 
forbids our seeing ourselves at all. 

As a matter of fact, whether we can explain 
it or not,. it is evident to every intelligent ob- 
server of his fellows, that on every side men 
are proving their inability to see themselves, 
by their obviously wrong estimate of them- 
selves. The man who is known to all as a 
close-fisted money-lover is calmly confident 
that he would never be suspected of lacking 
an open-handed readiness to give whenever 
and wherever it is his duty to give. He who 
is full of vanity and egotism feels sure that 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 53 

he would never have a higher estimate of 
himself than simple justice, in his case, calls 
for. The uncharitable man is glad that he 
always weighs his fellows with considerate- 
ness and accuracy. The man of a suspicious 
nature is afraid that he is hardly watchful 
enough of others to avoid being imposed on. 
He who cares most for the opinion of others, 
js thankful that it makes no difference to him 
what people think about him and his ways. 
Ill-natured men speak of their kindly spirit. 
Men of a sluggish nature tell of their strug- 
gle with a quick temper. And so all the 
way along in the list of personal peculiar- 
ities. Men show that they do not see them- 
selves by sincerely claiming qualities which 
they do not possess, and by indicating no 
perception on their part of the very charac- 
teristics which peculiarly distinguish them. 

All of us see that this is the case with 
others ; but most of us are unready to admit 
that it is probably also the case with our- 
selves. It does not seem to us possible that 
we can be vain, or overbearing, or unchar- 



154 SEEING AND BEING. 

itable, or ill-natured, or mean, or self-seeking, 
or unduly desirous of praise, without sus- 
pecting the fact. Yet why should we think 
that others are self-deceived in this direction, 
while we are not likely to be so ? Is it not 
evident that the very possession of one of 
these faults in a large degree would practi- 
cally unfit its possessor to judge of its rela- 
tive prominence in his character? 

For example, if a man were extremely 
egotistical, would he not, by his very ego- 
tism, be led to suppose that his view of him- 
self was only a natural and just recognition 
of his personal worth and ability? How, 
then, could he see that his egotism was any- 
thing more than a simple consciousness of 
the plain facts in the case? If, again, a man 
were slavishly in bondage to the opinions of 
others, would not his very estimate of the 
opinions of others cause him to feel that he 
desired merely to give fitting respect to pub- 
lic sentiment, and that his final decision to 
act in accordance with that sentiment would 
be his own independent judgment in favor of 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 55 

such action? How, in fact, could a man ever 
see that his marked peculiarity of character 
is anything more than a normal exhibit of 
right character at that particular point? 

We say, and we say honestly, that we want 
to see ourselves as we are, and that we should 
be glad to have others tell us in kindly frank- 
ness just what are our faults, in order that 
we may be able to correct them. But when 
others tell us, no matter how wisely or how 
kindly, that our chief faults are those which 
we have never seen in ourselves, and which 
we never could see there, simply because 
they are our faults, and therefore are invisi- 
ble to us, we are likely to feel sure that we 
can never get any help from persons who 
misunderstand us as much as these persons 
do. And so it is that while we are unable 
to see ourselves as we are, we are unwilling 
to believe that others can see us more clearly 
than we can see ourselves. And so it is true, 
that we can never see ourselves as we can 
see others, nor see ourselves as others can 
see us. 



156 SEEING AND BEING. 

At the best, our sight of ourselves must 
be by means of the reflected images of our- 
selves in the mirrors of other minds than our 
own. We must know what we are by seeing 
how we are seen in those mirrors. It is a 
proverb of the ages, in recognition of this 
truth, that "the best mirror is a faithful 
friend." But there is a gain in also seeing 
ourselves as we are reflected in the minds of 
those who have no love for us. Hence it is 
that Pope gives counsel: 

" Trust not yourselves ; but your defects to know, 
Make use of every friend, and — every foe." 

It is not that every friend's estimate of us is 
a correct one because it is the estimate of a 
friend ; nor yet that every enemy's estimate 
of us is either correct or incorrect simply 
because it is the estimate of an enemy. But 
it is that our only approximately correct 
knowledge of ourselves must come to us 
through a wise weighing of the varying and 
multiplied estimates of us and of our course 
by friends and foes ; we knowing all the time 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 57 

that both friend and foe can see us more 
clearly than we can ever see ourselves, and 
that therefore we must not accept our own 
estimate of ourselves as sure to be more 
accurate than the estimate of either friend 
or foe. 

Inasmuch as we cannot see ourselves, we 
must get on in life without the help, or the 
hindrance, which would come to us through 
our seeing ourselves. Inasmuch as others 
can see us, we ought to make the best use 
possible of the various views of ourselves 
which others put at our disposal. 

If those whose judgment we value, and in 
whose sense of fairness we have confidence, 
assure us sincerely that they see in us qualities 
and characteristics which we had never sup- 
posed were ours, and which we regret to learn 
are a part of ourselves, we ought to accept this 
view of us as probably more accurate than our 
own opinion of ourselves, and set ourselves at 
battling against the evil thus disclosed in us. 
If, on the other hand, those whose judgment 
we value, and in whose sense of fairness we 



158 SEEING AND BEING. 

have confidence, show us that, in all sincerity, 
they honor us more highly and trust us more 
fully than we suppose ourselves to deserve, 
it is for us to be grateful for this result of 
their seeing us as we cannot see ourselves, 
and to struggle on determinedly in the effort 
not to prove unworthy of such favor as is 
thereby shown to us. In either event, it is 
not for us to say that we can see ourselves 
more clearly than others can see us ; for that 
is an impossibility. 



XVI. 

THE GAIN OF A TWOFOLD VIEW. 



Two eyes are better than one; but two 
eyes are of service only as they act together 
for the giving of a twofold view of one and 
the same thing. One eye is not enough to 
enable a man to see one thing to the best 
advantage. Two eyes would be more than 
enough if they could not work together so 
as to bring out one object into greater dis- 
tinctness. Here is the difference, and it is a 
great difference, between having eyes that 
are single and having a single eye. 

It is by the combined operation of our two 
eyes, in their independent and co-operative 
working, that we judge of the position and 
form of the simplest objects within range of 
our vision. He who is deprived of one eye 
is liable to misjudge both distance and form 
in looking at objects near or remote; and it 

159 



160 SEEING AND BEING. 

is only by his becoming intelligently familiar 
with the consequences of his defect that he 
is enabled to overcome them in a measure by 
making due allowance for them. 

A young man who lost an eye by an acci- 
dent found, as he returned to his desk, that 
when he attempted to dip his pen into the ink- 
stand he was liable to miss his aim, and to fall 
short of or to reach beyond the inkstand's 
mouth. Only by repeated experiments did 
he learn how to gauge his action correspond- 
ingly with his imperfect — and so misleading 
— sight. Children sometimes gain a practi- 
cal knowledge of this truth by experiment- 
ing in its line. They will, for example, set a 
small cork on a ledge before them, and, with 
one eye closed, will attempt to knock it off 
from the ledge. In most cases they will fail 
to hit the cork on the first trial, because they 
use but one eye in looking at it, whereas a 
twofold view is essential to its locating in 
their mental vision. If, indeed, they had the 
power of turning their two eyes in opposite 
directions so as to look at two corks at the 



SEEING AND BEING, l6l 

same time, the case would be no better with 
them; for one eye is not enough to give a 
full and fair view of one thing. It is the two 
eyes turned separately, from their two points 
of view, at one and the same thing, that 
bring out to their possessor a clear and in- 
telligent sight of that which he looks at. 

A familiar illustration of this truth is found 
in the photographic stereograph, which is a 
unified twofold view of the object photo- 
graphed. The primitive photographic cam- 
era has but one eye; hence, of course, it 
gives a one-eyed view of that at which it is 
directed. That one-eyed view, like every 
other one-eyed view, is flat and partial. Now, 
merely to multiply eyes to a photographic 
camera, unless those eyes were to work to- 
gether in bringing out one and the same 
view, would only multiply flat and partial 
views, as reproduced by that camera. But 
when, as in the stereoscopic camera, two pho- 
tographic lenses are brought to bear on the 
same object at different angles corresponding 

to the visual angles of the two eyes of a man, 
ii 



1 62 SEEING AND BEING. 

two separate yet correspondent views are re- 
produced ; which, when looked at by the two 
eyes of the same person, through two sepa- 
rate yet correspondent lenses, stand out in 
raised vividness as a thing of reality, instead 
of as a flat and partial picture. 

In many a case it is true that two pairs of 
eyes are needful to that twofold vision which 
is essential to a correct mental view of an 
object of sight. The two sides of the shield 
must be looked at from opposite directions, 
at one and the same time, in order to their 
intelligent observing in their separate dis- 
tinctness; and it takes two persons, seeing 
separately yet seeing co-operatively, to secure 
that twofold view of the two-sided shield 
without which the shield cannot be seen and 
known in its diversified completeness. It is 
not enough that the two pairs' of eyes be di- 
rected at the same shield; if they be directed 
from the same standpoint, they are but dupli- 
cates of each other. Nor is it enough that 
they be directed at the same shield from dif- 
ferent standpoints; if their separate observa- 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 63 

tions be not brought together, they are two 
different and apparently contradictory views. 
The two views must be unified as one twofold 
view, or they give no advantage over the one 
partial view, or over the two views which 
seem irreconcilable. 

It is by this bringing together of different 
but correspondent views of the same heavenly 
bodies, from co-operating observers at differ- 
ent earthly standpoints, that the distances 
and the size and the movements of the stars 
are computed intelligently. No one pair of 
eyes could compass this. Nor would any 
number of pairs of eyes tend to its compass- 
ing if they merely looked in their isolation, 
without any relation to the lookings of others. 
When the transit of Venus is to be calcu- 
lated, one party of observers goes to the 
ends of the earth in one direction, and another 
party goes to the opposite ends of the earth. 
From their different standpoints these parties 
observe the planet independently; and after 
this they come together to compare the re- 
sults of their separate observings, in order 



1 64 SEEING AND BEING. 

to secure a unified view of the differing yet 
corresponding observations. And only in 
some such way as this does any one person 
obtain for himself a knowledge of the heavens 
he looks at, beyond the possibility of his own 
unaided seeing. 

In applying this principle to the realm of 
intellectual vision, there are two main errors 
to be guarded against. It being obvious that 
two pairs of eyes are better than one pair, it 
is important to bear in mind, on the one 
hand, that each pair of eyes must have its 
own point of vision ; and, on the other hand, 
that the two pairs of eyes, seeing indepen- 
dently, must be directed at the same object 
with a desire to aid, and to be aided by, the 
other pair of eyes, in bringing out that ob- 
ject in unmistakable distinctness. Not two 
views which are identical, nor yet two views 
which are deemed each complete in itself, 
but two views which complement each other, 
and which together make the unified twofold 
view, — these are the views of truth which 
are the perfection of human truth-seeing. 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 65 

There are persons who want others, espe- 
cially their immediate friends, to see all truth 
just as they see it. They expect others to 
have their standpoint and their angle of vis- 
ion, and hence to perceive no more than they 
would perceive if they were the only observ- 
ers in all the world. To such persons there 
is duplicated vision, but there is no twofold 
vision. They would never know more than 
one pair of eyes could show them. 

Again, there are persons who want to see 
by themselves and for themselves whatever 
they look at, just as they can see it; and who, 
because they want others to do the same 
thing, would have their view and the view 
of others recognized as different views, with- 
out any attempt to reconcile their differings. 
And this they think is having and allowing 
independence of mental vision. Such per- 
sons have no gain through the observations 
of other eyes than their own. The one par- 
tial view which they obtain from their own 
single standpoint of vision is the only view 
they ever secure, however wide is the circle 



1 66 SEEING AND BEING. 

of their keen-eyed friends and acquaintances. 
And these two classes of observers comprise 
by far the larger part of all the observers in 
the realm of mental vision. 

In order to secure the full advantage of a 
twofold view of truth, a man must look at 
the subject independently from his own point 
of mental vision, while a correspondent ob- 
server looks at the same subject indepen- 
dently from his point of mental vision ; and 
then the two views must be looked at as two 
independent and correspondent views through 
the lenses of a mental stereoscope, by means 
of which the two views will seem as one 
view, even while they have more value than 
two views. It is not always, however, an 
easy matter to unify two corresponding 
mental views by bringing them into mental 
focus. Sometimes, indeed, on looking into 
an accurate stereoscope, one sees the two 
views beneath it as conflicting views, lacking 
even the distinctness of a single flat view. 
The trouble, in such a case, is not in the 
view, but is in the looker's eyes, which, for 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 6/ 

the time, are not working together. As, 
however, the looker persistently looks and 
looks, with a confident desire to see the unity 
of the different impressions, the lines grow 
clear to his eyes, and the picture rises up be- 
fore him in its vivid prominence. 

So it sometimes is in the effort to find the 
unity of the two views of truth presented by 
two lenses of a mental stereoscope. There 
must be a patient and a confident looking 
for that focal view which shall unify the 
two impressions, so that their result shall 
be an advance on any single impression. 
And when that focal view is attained to, the 
effort that it has cost is counted the wisest 
of outlays. 

Thg possibility of such sight-seeing as this, 
in the realm of mental vision, pivots on the 
coming together, in persistent co-operation, 
of two independent and correspondent sight- 
seers. It is a rare and blessed privilege to 
find two eyes that match our own, while they 
are wholly independent of them. It is to the 
power of this twofold vision that Sidney 



1 68 SEEING AND BEING. 

Lanier pays tribute, when he says of his gain 
from his double self: 

" By the more height of thy sweet stature grown, 
Twice-eyed with thy gray vision set in mine, 
I ken fair lands to wifeless men unknown, 

I compass stars for one-sexed eyes too fine. 
No text on sea-horizons cloudly writ, 

No maxim vaguely starred in fields or skies, 
But this wise thou-in-me deciphers it : 
Oh, thou'rt the Height of heights, the Eye of 
eyes! M 

Let no one be satisfied with his own par- 
tial and imperfect view of truth, however 
clearly it may stand out before his mental 
vision, when he can secure as its vivifying 
complement that other view from another 
self, which shall transform the part into a 
whole, and the flat picture into a •well- 
rounded reality! He who has never seen 
more than one pair of eyes can show him, is 
to be pitied. He who refuses the help of a 
second pair of eyes, when he could have them, 
is deserving not of pity, but of blame. 



XVII. 

STRIVING IN THE DIRECTION OF 
OUR BEST SEEING. 



One's best seeing is not of that which is 
already the real, but of that which is yet the 
ideal. And one's best work is in the en- 
deavor to make real his ideals. Every man 
has his ideals ; that is, every man who is not 
a mere groveler in life has his* ideals ; for if 
it were not for his ideals a man would be 
sure to be a groveler. He who is without 
an ideal is contented with his muck-rake and 
the sticks and straws which that rake enables 
him to gather into a heap. He who looks 
up to an imaginary shining crown above him 
as a possible attainment, is by that very ideal 
lifted above the limitations of the muck-rake. 

An ideal is necessarily altogether of the 

imagination, but an ideal is not necessarily 

altogether imaginary. An ideal is always an 

169 



170 SEEING AND BEING. 

object of the imagination, but it is not always 
a creation of the imagination. Because a 
thing is in itself unreal, it is not therefore 
beyond the possibility of realization; because 
as yet unattained, it is not as a matter of 
course unattainable. An ideal is that which 
at the present exists in thought, in conception, 
in imagination ; it is a fancied, but not there- 
fore a fanciful, standard or model, beyond the 
ordinary or the commonplace in actual real- 
ization or attainment. 

An ideal is that which is above and before 
a man in all his thinking and in all his feel- 
ing, when his thoughts or his feelings are 
beyond his lower selfish interests, and beyond 
the mere realm of sense. But a man's high- 
est ideal may be — indeed it often is — within 
the limits of possible realization; within the 
record of another's actual attainment or pos- 
session. Hence it is that the ideal is some- 
times the most truly real ; that that which the 
imagination pictures is that which the eye 
may see, which the hand may clasp, which 
the mind may enter into. And this jit is 



SEEING AND BEING. 171 

which gives the ideal its chiefest practical 
value in life. 

An ideal is a well-defined idea of what 
should be, of what may be, or of what is — 
as best and truest in the sphere of its ima- 
gining. There are ideals of duty, ideals of 
character, ideals of beauty, ideals of perform- 
ance. Every man has his ideals in one or 
another of these spheres, or in them all. But 
not every man makes the same use of his 
ideals, or gains the same measure of benefit 
from them. What to do with one's ideal, is 
an important question as bearing upon one's 
usefulness, one's progress, and one's possi- 
bilities in life. 

The poorest use of an ideal is to make it 
an object of dreamy, passive enjoyment; yet 
this is one of the commonest uses of an ideal. 
Building castles in the air js one of the most 
unremunerative of real-estate speculations; 
although seeing castles in the air may be an 
important preliminary to fortifying one's posi- 
tion in this matter-of-fact world. There is 
very little gain in merely admiring a high 



172 SEEING AND BEING. 

standard in any sphere, without being in- 
spired to struggle for attainment in the di- 
rection of that standard. Yet admiration of 
an ideal standard is essential to inspiration 
toward that standard. 

Michael Angelo, as a youth, had his ideals 
as a sculptor. It is said that the headless and 
limbless trunk of an antique Greek statue 
became to him such an ideal of sculptured 
beauty that he would stand before it for hours 
in admiration of its grace and power, until 
his loving hands, in their admiring caresses, 
had actually worn their impress on the mar- 
ble itself. Yet that was not the chief use of 
that ideal — or of the ideals which it sug- 
gested — in the mind of Michael Angelo. He 
set himself to realize the ideal ; and the im- 
press of his hands came to be more clearly 
seen in the forms of his Moses and his David 
than on that Torso Belvedere which had in- 
spired him. And here is the best and truest 
use of an ideal in any sphere. 

Even though the inspiration be not to im- 
mediate achievement in the direction of the 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 73 

ideal itself, the contemplation of an ideal 
ought to be a means of our uplifting and 
development. To recognize ideal beauty in 
a statue, in a painting, in a cathedral, or in a 
landscape, ought not to tempt us to slothful 
indulgence of its selfish admiration, or, yet 
worse, to selfish craving for its possession ; 
but it ought to inspire us to finer perceptions 
of the beautiful, to greater gratitude to the 
Author of all beauty, and to nobler endeav- 
ors to high thinking, and to grander doing 
and being. 

It is the same in conduct and in character 
as in the sphere of material beauty ; an ideal 
ought to be a source of stimulus and inspi- 
ration to him who recognizes that ideal. If 
we see, in another, elements of character, 
standards of conduct, graces of person or of 
manner, which conform to our ideals of ex- 
cellence, — and the most impressive ideals of 
conduct and character are commonly found 
impersonated before the eyes, — that ideal 
ought to be to us a continual reminder of 
what is attainable in being and doing, and a 



174 SEEING AND BEING. 

continual incentive to holy struggling in the 
direction of such attainment. 

When Moses was on the mountain summit 
at Horeb, face to face with God, there was 
given to him an ideal view of an earthly- 
sanctuary, and of material aids to worship, 
such as the world had never seen. That was 
a rare and wonderful privilege to Moses. But 
Moses was not to rest satisfied with the con- 
templation, and the memories, of his moun- 
tain vision. God told him what to do with 
his ideal. His duty was to prepare a taber- 
nacle and its furnishings, for the realization 
of that ideal. 

"According to all that I shew thee," said 
the Lord, " the pattern of the tabernacle, and 
the pattern of all the furniture thereof, even 
so shall ye make it." The ark, and the altars, 
and the table of showbread, and the candle- 
stick, and the flagons and the bowls, and 
even the tongs and the snuffers, as well as 
the tent and the hangings and the cover- 
ings, and the boards and the staves and the 
bars, and the rings and the loops and the 



SEEING AND BEING. 175 

clasps, and the pins, all were to be conformed 
to the divinely inspired ideal. " And see that 
thou make them after their pattern which hath 
been shewed thee in the mount." So the 
ideal became the real, and all the people of 
God, in all the ages since, have been the 
gainers by the use which Moses made of his 
ideal in the direction of the earthly worship 
of God. 

So with us all, when we have had some 
entrancing ideal vision on a mountain sum- 
mit of personal privilege. We may have 
seemed to come, as it were, face to face with 
God, in our studies, in our imaginings, or in 
our hallowed intercourse with some delight- 
ful representative of God. Our very faces 
may shine with the reflected light of our 
mountain visions, or of our spiritual com- 
munings. The thought of our ideal may so 
fill our minds, that the temptation to us is to 
give ourselves up to its passive and selfish 
enjoyment. But we have a duty with our 
ideal beyond its contemplation. Coming 
down from the mountain to the plain below, 



176 SEEING AND BEING. 

we must set ourselves at making real the 
best conceptions of our God-given ideal. 

In the earthly tabernacle of our own im- 
mortal spirits we must bring into being the 
forms of use and beauty which have been 
shown to us in the conceptions of song and 
story, or in the conduct and the character of 
those who have commanded our loving and 
reverent admiration; and at every stage in 
our toil and in our struggling, we must hear 
and heed the divine injunction, "See that 
thou make all things according to the pat- 
tern that was shewed thee in the mount." 

" Do noble things, not dream them, all day long; 
And so make life, death, and the vast forever, 
One grand, sweet song." 



XVIII. 

THE POWER OF A REMEMBERED 
VISION. 



Our best and highest conceptions of that 
which may be or which is to be, are depend- 
ent on our personal experiences or observa- 
tions of that which is or which has been. In 
other words, our ideals are limited by our 
perceptions of the actual. We cannot, in- 
deed, conceive of any goodness or bright- 
ness or admirableness, of any grandeur or 
glory or majesty, which is not included in or 
indicated by that which we have seen for 
ourselves, or which we have been made to 
see by the descriptions of those who have 
seen it. Moreover, others can convey to us 
an idea of what they have seen, only by means 
of a reference to what we have seen. It is, 
in fact, true, in a fuller sense than we are ac- 
customed to consider it, that "the lamp of 
12 177 



178 SEEING AND BEING, 

the body is the eye;" and that in proportion 
as the eye perceives bright visions or gazes 
into shadows, is there light or darkness in 
the inner man. 

When we speak of the vivid imaginings of 
the poet, the painter, the sculptor, the archi- 
tect, we are inclined to forget that no one of 
these can have in his mind any creation of 
fancy which is more than a combination or an 
elaboration of beauties which he has looked 
upon with his natural eye; and that he can 
never enable us to see the result of his ima- 
ginings except by means of our eyes of 
sense. If the poet were to employ words 
which are not figurative of our perceptions 
and experiences, his verse would be but 
senseless jargon to us. Even the inspired 
seer, in an attempt to convey to us a picture 
of the home of the redeemed, must speak of 
streets of gold and gates of pearl, and a sea 
of glass, and a great white throne, and of 
palms and harps and crowns, as a help to our 
conception of richness and splendor and re- 
joicing and victory. 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 79 

Raphael's Sistine Madonna can at its best 
represent no more than he and we have seen, 
or now see, in an exhibit of saintly, sacred 
womanhood, and of holy, winsome child- 
hood. Neither Phidias nor Michael Angelo 
could carve an impressive representation of 
Minerva, or of Moses, except by bringing 
out into clear prominence those traits of wis- 
dom, and of probity, and of holy boldness in 
faith, which have already been seen in the 
forms and faces and the conduct of the best 
of the human race. From the temples of 
Karnak in Upper Egypt, to the Taj Mahal in 
Agra, and to Giotto's Tower in Florence, 
every stately or graceful form in architecture 
took its conception from some visible beauty 
in nature, such as the lotus, the acanthus, 
the palm, the vine, the inter-arching branches 
of the trees, the tracery of frost-work, the 
towering walls and peaks of mountain heights, 
and the vaulted dome of the skies. 

Everywhere and always he who sees with 
the mind is limited in his possibilities of per- 
ception by that which he has seen, or which 



180 SEEING AND BEING. 

he now sees, with his eyes. The best that is 
before him in aspiration is inevitably condi- 
tioned on the best that is yet his, in present 
or remembered visions. 

One of the chiefest proofs of the veritable- 
ness of the gospel history is the fact that no 
character like that of Jesus of Nazareth 
could have been conceived in the mind of 
man if it had not been an actuality before 
the eyes of men. In all the religious books 
of the ages no such character is either pic- 
tured or suggested. No divinity of the 
Greeks or Romans, no deity or sage or saint 
of the Oriental world, no model teacher rep- 
resented in the rabbinical writings, approaches 
that standard of a Perfect Man which is real- 
ized in the gospel portraiture of Jesus. The 
best attempts of the early Christians to im- 
prove on, or to add to, the inspired repre- 
sentation of the character of Jesus, are only 
an added evidence of the impossibility of 
gaining a worthy ideal of character except 
by a sight of the real in such a character. 

Even now that the character of Jesus is 



SEEING AND BEING. l8l 

clearly pictured to the world, its choicest 
traits can be perceived in their surpassing 
beauty only by those who are enabled to see 
some measure of these traits reproduced in 
the followers and representatives of Jesus. 
His witnesses must present, in their own 
lives, a lofty ideal before those to whom they 
tell of One infinitely worthier and nobler and 
holier than themselves; for none of us can 
have in our brightest imaginings a concep- 
tion of Christ-likeness that is not based on 
some vision of Christ-likeness which has 
been before our natural eyes. In this sense 
it may be said that our best ideals are not 
before us, but behind us; that our highest 
hopes are of realizing at the fullest the good 
of which we have already had a gleam, and 
of which the memory abides with us as an 
inspiration and an incentive. 

When the prophet Elisha would have the 
confidence and courage of his terror-smitten 
servant restored to him, at Dothan, and found 
his own words of cheer unavailing to this 
end, he besought God to grant to that young 



1 82 SEEING AND BEING. 

man a glimpse of the Divine provisions for 
the protection of God's earthly servants. 
"And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray 
thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And 
the Lord opened the eyes of the young man ; 
and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was 
full of horses and chariots of fire round about 
Elisha. ,, In the light of that remembered 
vision, earth's dangers seemed very different 
to Elisha's servant from that hour onward. 
The memory of what he had seen forbade his 
having anxiety over what was to come. 

When, again, the Lord would have the 
Apostle to the Gentiles achieve such a work 
as no man had achieved before, and endure 
such trials and hardships as no man had en- 
dured before, the Lord granted a vision to 
Paul to encourage him in his doing and en- 
during unto the end. Just what that vision 
was Paul could not tell to others; for the 
realities of no vision can be disclosed except 
to those who have had corresponding visions 
of realities. But Paul could refer to his re- 
membered vision from time to time, and 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 83 

could give indications of the power over him 
of its ideal realities. " I will come to visions 
and revelations of the Lord," he said. " I 
know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago 
(whether in the body, I know not; or whether 
out of the body, I know not; God knoweth), 
such a one caught up even to the third heaven. 
And I know such a man (whether in the body, 
or apart from the body, I know not; God 
knoweth), how that he was caught up into 
Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, 
which it is not lawful for a man to utter." 

But for that remembered vision, the mis- 
sion of Paul might have been a failure, and 
the triumphs of Christianity would not have 
been what we now rejoice over. So it is with 
many another remembered vision ; as a real- 
ity of the past it is an ideal for the future, 
toward the realizing of which the seer looks 
forward with longing and hope, and unto 
which he strives with faith-filled courage. 

A remembered vision of good is a precious 
possession. He who can recall a scene of 
beauty, of grandeur, of holiness, of peace, 



1 84 SEEING AND BEING. 

or who has before his mind's eye a character 
of rare attractiveness and worth, which was 
known by him in the recent or the earlier 
past, has an ideal reality to look forward to, 
and to strive after, as no one without such a 
memory can have. Only he whose child- 
hood's home was a home of delight, has in 
advance any true conception of what his 
manhood's home ought to be. Only he who 
has lived in an atmosphere of Christian love 
and of Christian faith, can conceive of the pre- 
eminent joys of such as atmosphere. Only 
he who has looked into the face, and who has 
heard the words, and who has felt the heart- 
throbbings, of a true woman's best woman- 
hood, as mother, or sister, or wife, or friend, 
can conceive of a true woman's truest power 
and realest worth. Only he can conceive any 
measure of that which God has in store for 
his loved ones, who has had his eyes opened 
to perceive some measure of that which God 
has already given to his loved ones. 

Even though a remembered vision be as a 
momentary gleam of light in the darkness, 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 85 

its power in uplifting an ideal before the mind 
is a permanent power. Elisha's servant could 
never again have as vague or as low a con- 
ception of God's care of his loved ones after 
that glimpse which was given him, at Dothan, 
of the encircling host of heaven, as was pos- 
sible to him before then. If the man who 
was born blind, and whom Jesus restored to 
sight in Jerusalem, had been put back into 
blindness after once opening his eyes on this 
world of light and beauty, he could never be 
in the same state as in all his life before. 
The remembered vision of life and loveliness 
would have abided with him as an ideal and 
an inspiration to the day of his death; and 
heaven itself would have had added attrac- 
tions to him in the light of that vision. 

The best that we have seen of happiness 
or of character gives shape to our ideals of 
happiness and character; and if indeed we 
are granted but a single glimpse of a higher 
plane of happiness, or of a worthier and a 
more admirable character, than we have seen 
before, at once the best of our former ideals 



1 86 SEEING AND BEING. 

of happiness or of character are distanced by 
the new ideal, and henceforward the higher 
ideal is ours, with its nobler incentives to 
striving and aspiring. It is not, as we are 
accustomed to say, that our ideals are vision- 
ary, but rather that our visions of the real 
form our ideals, and that the best that we 
have seen and known is the lowest line of 
our conceptions of attainable good. 

Let us thank God for the visions he has 
granted to us of happiness and holiness and 
true loveliness, in the characters of those who 
have held before us the highest standards 
which we have yet seen, of being and doing ! 
Let us see to it that these remembered visions 
are as inspiring ideals to us of performance 
and of attainment in God's service! Let us 
pray God that our own being and doing may, 
by his grace, be an inspiration and an incite- 
ment to those upon whose sight our charac- 
ters and our conduct may gleam as the basis 
of a remembered vision ! 



XIX, 

THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF 
A GAZE. 



Our realest selves are our innermost selves. 
Not our bodies, but our spirits, are our true 
personality. There is wisdom in the sugges- 
tion that we ought not to say that we have 
souls, but rather that we are souls, and that 
we have bodies. Yet while we have bodies, 
which for the time being imprison our souls, 
our souls are dependent upon our bodies for 
the means of knowledge, and for helps to 
the attainment of character. It is through 
our bodily senses that we communicate with 
the world about us, and it is through our 
bodily senses that all influences for good or 
for ill come in upon our innermost being, 
and aid in shaping its very structure and 
destiny. 

What we eat and drink has its part in re- 

187 



1 88 SEEING AND BEING. 

fining or in debasing both the outer and the 
inner man, because through the outer man it 
reaches and affects the man within. Gross- 
ness of diet tends to grossness of nature. 
The stupefying or the exciting of the brain 
by means of narcotics and stimulants, deadens 
or destroys the finer qualities of one's being, 
or arouses and inflames its worst qualities. 

What we hear, or what we read, or what we 
see, that is elevating in tone, is an incitement 
and a help to the elevation of our natures; 
while there is a shaping power for evil over 
our natures in those teachings and prompt- 
ings of evil which reach us day by day 
through the avenue of our ears and eyes. 
But peculiarly is it true that that on which 
we deliberately, or with consent, fix our vis- 
ual and mental gaze, becomes a shaping and 
transforming power over our innermost being ; 
so that, as it is true in one sense that what 
we see shows what we are, in another sense 
it is true that what we gaze at decides what 
we shall be. 

He who deliberately fixes his gaze on things 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 89 

foul and loathsome, delighting himself in their 
attractions, will be found to lower himself 
steadily toward the level of the foul and 
loathsome; while he whose gaze is con- 
stantly fixed on things lovely and admirable 
is thereby helped toward the standard of 
the lovely and admirable. The street scav- 
enger's tastes, trained through his persistent 
looking for refuse, must be more and more 
away from the tastes of the purposeful stu- 
dent of the beautiful and the elevating in art. 
And he w T ho seeks his delight in the grosser 
appeals of art and literature to the natural 
eye and ear, will become so conformed to 
that which he thus makes his ideal, that he 
will no longer aspire to a higher attainment 
than that which is found in his present en- 
joyment. 

He whose gaze is fastened on wealth, or 
station, or popularity, or the pleasures of 
appetite or passion, as the delight of his eyes, 
is likely to become conformed in his inner 
man to the image which through his gaze 
has come to be the delight of his mind. The 



190 SEEING AND BEING. 

admiring gaze attracts and centers, and grad- 
ually shapes, the longings and endeavors of 
the gazer's entire being, until he lives for that 
which has held him in thrall, and which is, 
in fact, the embodiment of his supremest 
aspirations. 

In classic fable, he who looked into the 
face of the frightful Gorgon became thereby 
transformed into stone ; and because of this 
transforming power of that face, the face itself 
was set into the shield of Minerva, the god- 
dess of wisdom, as a means of petrifying 
every enemy of the goddess who turned his 
gaze against her. In sacred story it is de- 
clared that no mere mortal, while still in the 
flesh, can abide the effulgence of the Divine 
presence, or resist the effect of a gaze at 
the Divine glory. " Thou canst not see my 
face," says the Lord to Moses: "for man 
shall not see me and live." And thus it is 
that both fact and fable emphasize and illus- 
trate the truth that there is a transforming 
power in a gaze, whether that gaze be toward 
the good or the evil. 



SEEING AND BEING. 191 

The face or the personal character which 
holds our gaze fixedly, is likely to be a trans- 
forming power in our lives. We gradually 
come to be like those whom we like, the 
traits and the characteristics which we most 
admire in them being developed in ourselves 
through our very delight in those indications 
and exhibits of character. A child's expres- 
sion of face, and his modes of speech and 
conduct, are shaped more by the person on 
whom his young gaze is fixed with loving ad- 
miration than by any inherited tendencies. 
All the way along in life the admiring gaze 
is a large factor in the character-shaping of 
the gazer; and one of God's choicest gifts to 
any man is the exhibit before him of a win- 
some and noble character, that shall fix and 
hold his gaze, as an object of his affectionate 
interest. 

When two persons of widely different 
grades of character are brought into union, 
the question whether they shall finally be one 
on the higher plane, or on the lower, is 
largely dependent on the relative fixedness 



192 SEEING AND BEING. 

of gaze of the one party or of the other. If 
the gaze of the superior is fixed with greater 
admiration on the inferior, the tendency of 
that gazing will be toward the lower plane; 
but if the more earnest gaze be of the infe- 
rior toward the superior, it will be a means of 
bringing the two together on the higher 
plane. It is as though the attraction which 
held the gaze drew toward the object of at- 
traction all the inner life of the gazer, until 
that gazer's very being was transformed into 
the likeness of that at which he gazed. 

Peculiarly is it true that he whose gaze is 
fixed on things beyond the realm of sense is 
transformed into the likeness of the spiritual 
realm. He who is always looking above the 
stars is sure to have that "far-away look" 
that tells of his communings with the infinite. 
Moses, it is said, gave up the pleasures of a 
royal palace, and made his home in the desert, 
without complaining or reluctance; "for he 
endured as seeing Him who is invisible." 
And after Moses had been gazing into the 
very face of Him who is invisible, his own 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 93 

face shone with the preternatural light that 
came of his added likeness to the object of 
his gazing. 

The inspired writer, urging the Christian 
to lay aside every hindrance to success in the 
race of his earthly life course, enjoins it upon 
him to be "looking unto Jesus, the author 
and perfecter of our faith;" and the beloved 
disciple assures us that, if we will but keep 
our loving gaze on Him who is invisible, 
then, " if he shall be manifested, we shall be 
like him; for we shall see him even as he is; " 
or, in other words, to see him as he is, is 
equivalent to being in his likeness, trans- 
formed through our loving looking tow- 
ard him. 

And now as a practical question the in- 
quiry comes home to us, At what are we 
gazing with loving admiration? Is it the 
things of the lower nature, or the things of 
the higher? Is it the things of sense, or the 
things of spirit? Are we looking intently at 
the things which give pleasure for the moment, 
and will then pass away, or at the things 
13 



194 SEEING AND BEING. 

which shall endure eternally? Is our gaze 
toward Jesus, with a simple purpose of com- 
ing nearer to him, and becoming more like 
him, or do our eyes turn hither and thither 
listlessly, or with momentary longings after 
enjoyments and occupations that would hin- 
der our onward and upward progress ? Ac- 
cording as our gaze is fixed, so our characters 
will become. If our gaze is earthward, our 
likeness shall be of the earth, earthy. If our 
gaze is on the Lord, then "we all, with un- 
veiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory 
of the Lord, are transformed into the same 
image from glory to glory, even as from the 
Lord the Spirit." 



XX. 

THE COST OF A MOUNTAIN- 
OUTLOOK. 



If you should find a man lying prone and 
wounded at the base of a cliff, or groping his 
way cautiously along the bed of a rocky ra- 
vine, you might think it possible that he had 
fallen there, or that he had been thrown, from 
the eminence above. A slip of the foot as 
he walked the perilous brink, a moment's 
sleep as he sat there in restfulness, a push 
from a playful companion or from a vindic- 
tive foe, could have been the means of bring- 
ing him to the depths in which he now suffers 
or wanders. But if you should see the out- 
line figure of a man against the sky on a lofty 
hill-top or on a mountain crag, or if you 
should hear the call of one thus far above 
you on some summit outlook, you would 
know that that man neither slipped nor was 

195 



196 SEEING AND BEING. 

thrown to his present altitude; that it was 
by no careless misstep, and during no mo- 
ment of unconscious passivity, that he found 
his way to his present plane of standing and 
of observation. 

No man ever falls up hill. No man ever 
slips from a lower to a higher plane. No 
man is thrown by his fellow-man, either in 
playfulness or in enmity, to a lofty eminence 
above their common standpoint and its sur- 
roundings. A cost of purpose, of effort, of 
struggle, of endurance, is involved in every 
high attaining; and a mountain-outlook 
always represents aspiring mountain-climb- 
ing as the unavoidable precedent of the in- 
spiring mountain-vision. 

From his mountain-outlook on Pisgah, 
Moses saw stretched before his preternatural 
gaze all the Land of Promise into which the 
Lord's people were about to enter, with the 
beauties and the possibilities of that land as 
they were opening before that people in the 
loving plan of God. But before Moses had 
obtained this view he had been compelled to 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 97 

pass forty years of study in the foremost 
schools of human wisdom, forty years of 
training in the life of a desert shepherd, and 
yet forty years more of administrative and 
executive life as the leader of God's people 
on their toilsome journey toward that land. 
The privileges of such a mountain-outlook as 
that of Pisgah it is easy for all to recognize; 
but the cost of such a foothold for wide- 
reaching natural and spiritual vision is too 
often lost sight of — except by him of whom 
that cost has been required. 

When De Balboa finally stood on the Peak 
in Darien, and swept his glad gaze out over 
the newly discovered Pacific Ocean, he had a 
realizing sense of the fearful cost at which 
that mountain-outlook was at last secured to 
him; and the memory of that cost added 
fervency to his grateful thanksgiving to God, 
as he kneeled there in acknowledgment of 
the blessing now accorded him in compensa- 
tion for that cost. Many a traveler, in these 
later days, has lost his life in a struggle to- 
ward the ice-capped summit of Mount Blanc; 



198 SEEING AND BEING. 

and no traveler has ever reached that sum- 
mit without an expenditure of strength and 
endurance which came but little short of the 
cost of life itself. 

As it is with the natural mountain-tops, so 
it is with all the mental and moral summits 
from which men may have a wide-extending 
outlook: — no lofty point of vision is ever 
gained without a larger cost than is neces- 
sary for a foothold on a lower plane. If a 
man stands high above his fellows in his com- 
prehension of truths in any realm of fact or 
thought or fancy, or in his power to see or 
to foresee spiritual forces and their involvings, 
that man's altitude has cost him dearly; and 
no other man can fully share his outlook with- 
out a corresponding outlay. There is no up- 
ward progress save by upward struggling, 
and every added uplift is at the cost of a new 
outgoing of anxious and aspiring endeavor. 

"We have not wings, we cannot soar; 
But we have feet to scale and climb 
By slow degrees, by more and more, 
The cloudy summits of our time. 



SEEING AND BEING. 1 99 

" The heights by great men reached and kept 
Were not attained by sudden flight, 
But they, while their companions slept, 
Were toiling upward in the night." 

The way to a mountain summit is continu- 
ously, but not uniformly, upward. Every 
mountain path has its trying and dishearten- 
ing irregularities and depressions. It seems 
at times, indeed, to lead downward for the 
moment, and then the very peak itself which 
is the object of endeavor is lost sight of. 
All this discouragement is in the cost of 
mountain-climbing. Again, each added stage 
of progress only shows yet other stages to 
be surmounted; and one cost of upward 
struggling is the ever-growing thought in 
the mind of the toiler, that the summit of 
his longing is farther away than he dreamed 
of. It has been said with truth, that the 
higher a man ascends on the slopes of the 
mountain of knowledge, the vaster is the 
horizon of ignorance open to his vision. 
And every struggling toiler upward, as he 
reaches some momentarily restful table-land 



200 SEEING AND BEING. 

of observation, is but readier than before 
to say: 

" Far, far above 
This easy slope I gained, a mountain shines 
And darkens skyward with its crags and pines ; 
And upward slow I move ; 

" Because I know 
There is no level where I can pause, and say, 
'This is sure gain.' It is too steep a way 
For mortal foot to go. 

" There is no end 
Of things to learn, and books to cram the brain ; 
They who know all, still hunger to attain. 
What boots it that they spend 

" Long toiling years 
To gain horizons dim and limitless ? 
The higher up, the more the soul's distress 
In alien atmospheres." 

And this also is in the cost of a mountain- 
outlook. 

He who exhibits a high standard of thought 
or of knowledge in his speech or in his writ- 
ings has toiled long before attaining to that 
standard. Many are desirous of having the 



SEEING AND BEING. 201 

results of such outlay in study and reflec- 
tion, who would not be willing to make the 
outlay which is essential to those results. 
Many, indeed, have no thought of the cost 
involved in all high intellectual attainment; 
and their wonder is that they rise to no higher 
plane than that which they occupied long 
ago, while some who were with them then are 
now so far above them. They think, per- 
chance, that it is circumstances, rather than 
personal endeavor, that has caused this dif- 
ference of status. They fail to see, that, 
without the cost of hard mountain-climbing, 
no man has the gains of a mountain-outlook 
— for himself or for his fellows ; and that he 
who has not climbed has no need to wonder 
that his plane is lower than his fellow's who 
has done so. 

Peculiarly is it true that no man can bring 
a message from the heights of Pisgah, or the 
peaks of Darien, for the spiritual comfort 
and inspiration of his fellows, without the 
preliminary cost to himself of the years of 
struggle which preceded that mountain-out- 



202 SEEING AND BEING. 

look, and which culminated there. The ten- 
derness of sympathy and the clearness of 
moral insight which mark his messages of 
counsel or of encouragement are in the re- 
membrance, it may be, of long-gone soul- 
visions from some toil-won mountain-summit, 
where for a time he was face to face with 
God, and whence he looked out upon the 
vast and boundless ocean of God's love and 
truth. Those visions had their bloody cost, 
and the memory of them has chastened and 
subdued all subsequent views of life and char- 
acter in the mind of him who was granted 
them. Others may have no suspicion of the 
cost at which he won his power of helpful 
ministry in love; but with him it is an ever- 
present, ever-potent consciousness. 

If it is personal ease that one desires for him- 
self, the plain below, rather than the moun- 
tain above, is the station for him. If it is 
opportunity and privileges for himself and in 
behalf of others that one aspires to, it is the 
mountain top to which he should look, and 
toward which he should strive. And even 



SEEING AND BEING. 203 

when one has decided to give up personal 
ease on the plain below in order to make 
progress skyward, he will find his strivings 
more and more toilsome, and his ascent more 
and more of a tax upon all his powers. 
Wordsworth tells us truly : 

" Tis, by comparison, an easy task 
Earth to despise ; but to converse with Heaven, 
This is not easy. To relinquish all 
We have, or hope, of happiness or joy, 
And stand in freedom loosened from the world, 
I deem not arduous ; but must needs confess 
That 'tis a thing impossible, to frame 
Conceptions equal to the soul's desires; 
And the most difficult of tasks to keep 
Heights which the soul is competent to gain/* 

There is gain in a mountain-outlook of 
observation, of thought, and of feeling, — 
gain for one's self, and gain for one's fellows ; 
but he who would have that gain must know 
that it can be obtained only through the cost 
of trial and struggle and endurance; and un- 
less he is ready to meet that cost he cannot 
hope for the outlook. He also who has 
gained a mountain-summit of knowledge or 



204 SEEING AND BEING. 

of character, ought not to wonder over, or to 
regret, the cost of his being there. Without 
that cost, he could never have reached his 
present high plane, never have seen what is 
now in his scope of vision, never have been 
able to speak the words whereby he now in- 
structs, or warns, or cheers, his fellows around 
or below him. 

Would you gain a mountain-outlook? and 
are you willing to meet its cost? Then nerve 
yourself for the struggle, and count the full- 
est outlay but the fitting expenditure: 

" And lay thine up-hill shoulder to the wheel, 
And climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou 
Look higher, then — perchance — thou mayest be- 
yond 
A hundred ever-rising mountain lines, 
And past the range of Night and Shadow — see 
The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day 
Strike on the Mount of Vision ! 

So, Farewell." 



